


The Goblin's Guide to Anxiety and Adventure

by GetSomeChill



Category: The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue Series - Mackenzi Lee
Genre: Abuse, Adventure, Anxiety, Canon LGBTQ Character, Friendship, Historical, M/M, Monty/Percy, Other, POV First Person, Pirates, Post-Book, Post-Canon, stutter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-16
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-08-03 05:28:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 23,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16320008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GetSomeChill/pseuds/GetSomeChill
Summary: Life of 'the Goblin' seventeen years after his siblings are supposedly kidnapped by pirates.Plagued by severe anxiety, as a result of his abusive father, Grayson Montague spends his days writing stories with his best friend Seb. Stories about the imagined adventures of his brother and sister, kidnapped by pirates seventeen years previous. But he can't stay hidden in fiction forever. Soon he must battle through his anxiety and forge a life in the real world--with or without his piratical siblings.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is my imagining of 'the Goblin' as a grownish man but was inspired by the Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue, written by Mackenzi Lee, and thus all credit goes to Lee and not me (hey, that rhymes!). If you've not read Gent's Guide, what are you doing with your lives? Go download the audiobook posthaste. Alright, chums, enjoy... 
> 
> **OK...so I was planning to be Gossip Girl anonymous but people keep asking me to write new stuff (thank you!). Which is what I do all day. So...I'll say it fast...follow me @TheRGibson on Insta for literary updates and shizz. Mainly dog pics, though, I'll be honest. Also, the ego boost your comments on here have given me is priceless. You the best! Now I wish teenager me had shared her fanfics.

Cheshire, England. 

17—

I’m not good at much, but I am a veritable scholar at mucking up a conversation. It seems such a simple thing to open one’s mouth and speak, but the words I plan to say always become trapped somewhere from brain to tongue and come out a mumbled mess of sounds no human could comprehend. Which, as a future peer of the realm, is a big problem. This conversation is no different—made worse by the look of disappointment and fury on my father’s face as he tries to save it from my inadequacy. The French accent creeping into his vowels tells me he is a lot closer to losing his composure than I am comfortable with.

Mother stands stoic at his side as he speaks with a man so clad in ruffles he appears part man part cake.

“What is wrong with you?” Father hisses, once the ruffled man has gone, heading towards the real and equally clad desserts.

“I-I—”

“You are an embarrassment.”

I hang my head, my cheeks flushed, and a familiar prickle of sweat beneath each arm. A much more familiar prickle takes up behind my eyes and I wage war with myself to keep from crying in the middle of this damn party. I thank God at least for my silk coat, tailored so tight in the shoulders it keeps me from slumping and looking even more pathetic.

“I-I’m sorry,” I manage to get out, but the damage has been done. Father’s expression is one of utter loathing. Another familiar sight.

“I shall speak with you in the morning,” he says, watching as a wigged cove makes his way closer to strike up business talks within which I would be much more of a hindrance than anything. “Until then get out of my sight before you embarrass me further. And become a man, for Christ sake, Grayson.” 

Without waiting for him to change his mind, or for someone else to draw me into a discussion, I scurry to the farthest corner of the ballroom. Hidden in a shadowed alcove as far from the glittering masses as possible, I slump to the floor with my head in my hands, trying to draw a full lung of air. Thick clouds of perfume close my throat up even more and my head swims with the sheer effort of breathing and not dissolving into a hyperventilating puddle of tears and self-hatred. A corset of my own anxiety tightens around my chest.

“All right?” a timid voice asks, as someone drops beside me. It’s a voice I’d know anywhere—Sebastian. 

I choke for a few moments on a response. 

“No,” I eventually get out, and throw my head back to rest against the wall. Heat’s still burning my face to such an extreme I’m probably the shade of a ripe beetroot.

“Well, I had a fabulous idea last night,” Seb says in response, excitement teasing the edges of his words. “So you will be absolutely grand in a moment.” 

“A-an idea?”

How can just two words be so difficult to utter? I almost growl with the frustration of it. I would, if that wasn’t another utterance I’d have to fight for. But Seb just grins, his face broken in two by his large teeth, the front ones overlapping, and his eyes alight in a way that has my heart slowing and my breath coming easier. 

Seb, almost two years my junior but my only friend for as long as I can recall, is the one person in the entire bleeding world who never finishes my sentences. No matter how much I stutter and choke on the words I’m trying to spew out, he sits patiently waiting as if I were speaking in a perfectly ordinary manner. And that alone means I often do speak far more legibly. That and because Seb and I don’t talk about society or the estate I’m supposed to one day run here in Cheshire.

We talk about pirates.

“The most brilliant of ideas,” he says, crossing his legs and pulling a battered note book from the inside pocket of his coat. On the cover is written in my own hand  _The Swashbuckling Adventures of Henry and Felicity Montague._ It is abook in which my older siblings, truly abducted by pirates nearly seventeen years previous, have been immortalised in fictional glory. We have twelve of these books in total, hidden in a box under Seb’s bed, full of daring adventures as far removed from stuffy parlours, parties, and disappointed fathers as it is possible to be. Because of this, I spend far more time in Sebastian Peele’s house than my own. Sat at his desk, my fingers stained with ink and cramped from writing, our imaginations ablaze with adventure.

I never stutter when I write.

When I write, I can be free. 

With a smile of my own, revealing two dimples on my otherwise unremarkable face, I snatch the notebook from him and read over the page Seb’s written in such a hasty scrawl I need to squint through several ink blots.

“This i-is marvellous,” I exclaim, hardly stuttering at all this time, excitement a living thing in my veins.

“I thought you’d like it.” Seb pulls a pencil from a different pocket. “Now it’s your turn. What do the Montague siblings do next?”


	2. Chapter 2

Whenever I’m having trouble with my emotions, which is far more often than I’d care to admit, I think of my lost siblings. Not that I’ve ever consciously met them. I've been told my sister held me often in my first three months, whereas I was held by my brother only once. He declared me small and shrunken looking, I promptly vomited on his lapel and undertook the occupation of screaming my bloody lungs out. Not the finest of meetings. He has since, however, become something of a hero to me—if being abducted by pirates is a thing one can idolise. But I don’t have many people to look up to. So, my probably murdered brother will have to do. It’s not like I’m allowed to talk about what he was really like in any case. There is no topic more taboo than Henry and Felicity Montague. Which, incidentally, would be a bloody good way to start my next story.

I dip a piece of toast into my egg and yoke spills down the sides of the cup and across my plate. Even this seemingly innocent action has my father scowling in disappointment. Who knew one could eat eggs the wrong way?

My left cheek throbs with a new bruise forming—the consequence of embarrassing the name of Montague yet again last night. From across the table Mother’s doing a good job of not noticing the way my napkin is spotted with blood from a split lip or how my eyes are still watery from my bursting into tears the moment I stepped into Father’s office and he came at me with a raised fist. I focus my attention back on my egg, until it is deemed an acceptable time to excuse myself, then once I am alone in my room promptly burst into tears again.

 _Become a man, Grayson_ echoes in my mind as my sobs turn so violent I vomit my breakfast into the chamber pot.

Not for the first time, I wish my brother and sister were here and not likely dead at the bottom of the ocean, cut through their throats by pirates.

Although my parents will not so much as utter their names, my ideas of Henry and Felicity are not entirely fictitious. Seb’s father, the aloof Mister Peele, claims he used to play billiards with my brother when they were lads. He also claims he was a sodomite and a drunk who was kicked out of Eton for those exact vices and who tried to have his way with everyone—lad or lady.

I, however, couldn’t give a fig who he… _had his way_ _with_. He’s a pirate in my mind, after all. My version of Henry Montague stands at the helm of a ship with reddish-brown hair, the same shade as mine, blowing behind him in a sea breeze. Maybe with a wooden leg or a few piratical scars. A deft hand with a sword and a smooth talker with the ladies—something I have never been able to claim. If I stutter badly with Father’s associates, it is nothing compared with how I speak to women. Conversing with them makes me lose all sense of reason entirely.

When I was thirteen and my attraction to the opposite sex was first becoming known to me in the form of ill-timed erections, I fled at the mere thought of girls in the vicinity. I would be the shame of my famously promiscuous brother. But not of my apparently bookish sister. She and I, in my overzealous imagination, would get on famously.

Zounds, I really hope they’re not dead.

Wiping my eyes with my sleeves, and feeling distinctly less alone at the mere thought of my siblings, I force myself up off the floor.

Although I would like nothing more than to cocoon myself in blankets and sleep the day away, I wash my face to rid it of any excess blood, rinse my mouth out, and go in search of Seb.

Piratical adventures wait for no man—even ones that’ve just been punched rather hard in the face by their father. We have writing to do.


	3. Chapter 3

“He can’t get drunk,” Seb exclaims from where he’s sprawled across the rug on his bedroom floor, resting on his elbows and surrounded by pages of our pirate books.

“B-b-” I take a deep breath and try to slow my excitement so I can at least choke out a few words. “But he’s H-Henry Mon-Mon-Montague.”

Damn our last name being so bloody long.

“And they have to have _some_ flaws," I eventually splutter out. 

“That’s true. But maybe it could be…actually, yes, alcohol is probably one of the tamer vices. Especially considering the rumours we’ve heard about your brother.”

I nod, and take the tattered goose feather from Seb, my fingers already stained with ink.

“Don’t have him too high in his altitudes, though,” Seb says, over the scratching of my quill. “Otherwise he won’t be able to defend himself in the battle we have planned for the next chapter.”

“Good point.”

We write like this, side by side on the rug, until both our shoulders are stiff from propping ourselves up and our right hands have locked into claws. We lose ourselves in the story, until I’ve forgotten my own damn name, and time seems liquid—flowing always too fast towards when I need to return home. Not that I hold any homely feelings for the manor I'll one day own.

“Mister Peele,” comes a nasally voice from the doorway, what seems like moments later. We both jump so much I blot the page and ruin the last sentence I wrote.

“Damnation,” I say, as Seb turns towards his valet.

“Mmm?”

“Your mother has requested your presence at dinner, sir.”

“Dinner?”

“Dinner, sir.”

“But it’s only…” Seb glances around, as if the walls themselves will tell us what the time is.

I sit up with a groan and stretch my arms above my head. The moon outside the window shines upon the Peele’s grounds, casting everything with a haunting, silver glow. It’s entrancing, equal parts beautiful and creepy. At least, that’s what I think before the implications of said moon hit me like the punch I took several hours ago.

“Oh no,” I cry, leaping to my feet.

“What?” Seb squints through the darkness. We’ve been so involved in our stories neither of us has noticed the shrouded gloom that’s fallen over everything.

“It’s dark.”

“So it is.” He glances back down, gathering the papers into a pile, before he too seems to remember why the darkness has put me out so much.

“Shit,” he mutters, rising to his feet as well, and throwing our books into a box he promptly kicks beneath the bed.

Down in the stables I practically yell at the poor stable hands to get my horse ready, then gallop the entire way home. Thank Christ and all his friends there aren’t any carriages or riders coming in the opposite direction. When I’ve made it down my drive—which is so ridiculously long one can’t help wondering what the architect was compensating for when he designed it—I throw my horse’s reins at the nearest footman and take the front steps two at a time.

Mother, as I knew she would be, is pacing the entrance hall, heels clacking.

“Grayson!” she calls, as soon as she spots me, the furrow in her brow smoothing out. She drops the gold locket she’s been holding so it swings to rest against her chest and smooths the skin at the corner of her eyes. “Where have you been?”

I’m not fully in control of my lungs yet so it takes me several minutes to finally tell her I was at Seb’s.

“Lost track of time,” I splutter, and flop down on a chaise like I’m a swooning woman.

“You know you’re supposed to be home before dark. You know that.”

I’m aware she can’t help the way she is—I had to have inherited my anxious disposition from someone, after all—but it is tiresome sometimes. Although, if two of my children were stolen by pirates, I might keep some close controls on the third as well.

If I ever do meet my brother and sister I’ll certainly have some strong words with them about my current restriction of freedom. That is, if those strong words could be choked out of my ever-disobedient throat. Perhaps I’ll just write them down instead.

As a direct result of my brother and sister being abducted by pirates, I am not permitted a grand tour of the continent. Or, in fact, a little tour of England. No touring is to take place of any locations. Even exploring our own damn maze sends Mother into a near faint. Despite finishing my Eton exams with the highest marks, I am imprisoned in Cheshire for the foreseeable future—aside from the odd accompanied trip to London with a particularly heavy-handed French prick.

Estate management, it should be no surprise to learn, is much more boring than travel and pirates.

As if to hammer home the reason for Mother’s worry her golden locket catches the light. Usually it’s kept hidden beneath the layers of her stays and shift and all those other things women are encased in. Father probably doesn’t even know it exists.

I, however, know exactly what’s inside that seemingly plain piece of jewellery. It contains two small portraits: one of Henry and one of Felicity.


	4. Chapter 4

When I wake the following morning, just as dawn is creeping over the horizon, it’s to find Father already up. Being used to mornings to myself (in particular, mornings sans Father) I almost jump clean out of my skin when I see him sipping tea at the breakfast table.

“Grayson,” he says, after he’s put down his cup with deliberate slowness. He could be a fine stage actor if the estate management thing goes south, he’s certainly got an eye for the dramatic. The disdain in his voice, though, already makes me want to shrivel up and cry.

I definitely cry a lot more than a nearly grown man should. It disgusts Father, but Seb never seems to mind—he lets me cry without acknowledging it, then when the tears are all gone, quietly asks if I want to talk. I wish all men were as decent as Seb.

“Father,” I croak back, after a lot of silently moving my mouth like a beached fish. My lungs tighten in a familiar way.

“Don’t just stand there like a simpleton. Sit.”

And, like the obedient dog I apparently am, I do.

“You are coming to London with me,” he says, as the rays of sun filtering through the window hide behind a cloud. I wish I could join them. “Today.”

“W-why?”

“To learn how to manage this estate.” He takes up some papers resting beside his empty cup and stands. “I will make you into something worth being, Grayson.”

Which is always a brilliant way to start a trip.

~

I hate London.

I know it’s our great nation’s capital but it’s also a shit hole. Quite literally in most areas.

The air itself seems thicker, stale and hard to breathe, with the amount of people crammed into its teeming streets. Even crossing the road means taking your life in your hands. I never feel _safe_ here, like I’m being watched at all times. Which of course I am—by hungry eyed children with quick fingers. And Father.

Perhaps if Seb were here, if I could go on a grand tour with my best friend, as my brother did, but as it happens I’m stuck with Father. And his friends who are all just versions of him. They all sneer at me when I choke on air and cannot get my words out, all finish my sentences when they grow impatient, or just turn from me completely. None of them ever _look_ at me. None of them even try.

Which is why, when Father announces I am to give a speech at his club a week into our London stay, I nearly swoon against the nearest flat surface.  

I spend most of the night lying awake, looking up at the bed hangings, my heart beating like it’s trying to make some desperate bid for freedom. I barely manage to get my toast down as Father keeps up a strongly worded rhetoric regarding how I’m absolutely prohibited from embarrassing him, and if I stand in front of his connections mute he’ll beat me into next Christmas. Always one for a reassuring speech.

This will be my entire life. With only a few battered pirate books as a ray of sunshine in the grey monotony. The one thing to live for, if I’m going to really go for the dramatics.

“Grayson,” Father scolds, grabbing my arm so hard a lance of pain shoots up to my shoulder and I’m pulled backwards with a stumble. A carriage clatters past and I jump, my heart racing, and my foot landing right in a steaming pile of horse manure.

Fantastic.

Father mutters something I don’t hear, and don’t particularly care to, as he grips my sleeve and hauls me after him. Towards the speech.

Still shaken from my near-death-by-carriage experience, and smelling less than gentlemanly, we make it to today’s destination—a tall town house with a brass plaque on the wall and a butler with mustachios he must have to put in rags every night to keep their curled formation. When he announces us, in an upper-class accent so precise it sounds put on, his facial hair doesn’t even move.

As we make our way farther into the room my breath comes quicker. The speech Father wrote for me is creased in my hands from where I’m holding it so tightly and the ink has smeared from my own palm sweat.

I want to run away. Run and hide and get as far away from here as I can. I can’t manage an estate—not when I can’t even face a speech in front of twenty gentlemen. Men who I will have to converse with alone once Father’s out the picture.

Just as I’m contemplating how best to escape, and the likelihood of one of those street carriages rolling straight through the large front window to crush us all, I’m nudged to the front of the room and Father hits the side of his glass for attention. He nods at me to proceed.

And it’s everything I thought it’d be. Every nightmare I’ve ever had. Each scenario I was playing out as I lay awake last night.

I can’t get a single word out.

Nothing.

I move my mouth, choke, and splutter, but I can’t speak. Despite the eyes facing me, each pair narrowing more by the second, I stand there mute. My back is starting to sweat and I’m desperately close to tears. I’m fighting with everything I have for the first sound out my mouth not to be a sob. My throat is so tight around it I can barely breathe.

The parchment before me shakes so much between my fingers I can’t read what Father's written for me to say.

 _Become a man, Grayson,_ echoes in my mind over and over again, like a hundred phantom Fathers. And I can’t do this. I can’t. When the speech falls from my fingers I deem it a sign and without looking at the rage filled features of my father, or the disdain from every other gentleman present, I flee.

Although, flee might be too brave a word for what I do.

I expect the outside air to refresh me, open up my lungs, but of course it’s bloody London so I can’t breathe out here either. My only option is to keep walking, as fast as my legs will take me, until I forget about Father and those men and how much I hate every damned thing about myself. It isn’t until I’ve been fleeing for a good half an hour that I look up to see where I am.

I have no idea. Abso-bloody-lutely none. There are houses, and carriages, and more people than I even knew possible, but nothing I can identify as familiar. Not even a visible sign owing to the damned people everywhere.

Father was carrying all our coinage so unless I can convince one of these carriages to take me back to our apartments with only the promise of payment at the end—which is impossible seen as though the simple act of speaking is lost to me—I’m well and truly screwed. In London. The city of thieves and murderers and God only knows what else.

I keep stumbling forwards, the panic inside me so hot I’m struggling to even stay standing, and straight into someone. Luckily, he’s a hard-to-knock-over sort and though we both stumble we remain upright.

“Steady on,” he says, as I push past, through a crowd that seems to get thicker by the second.

Fighting with a desperation unknown to me until this point I make it to the other side and prop myself up against a wall. Shaking, my face covered in snot and tears, and sucking at the air in a gulping crying fit any infant would be proud of, I sink down and hug my knees to my chest. I don’t even care that I’m probably sitting in piss or shit or any of the other bodily fluids one usually finds coating the streets of our capital.

People trip over me and more than a few of them shout back when they realise what tripped them. I’m only able to hold my knees tighter and pray the shaking lessens so I can think.

“Are you alright?” I hear through the fog in my brain an indeterminate amount of time later. The voice is overly loud, even in this crowd, which is probably why it manages to pierce its way through my panic.  “Are. You. Alright?”

I peer up into the face of a pale, almost offensively pretty man, somewhere in his thirties by the look of him. But it’s the right side of his face that catches my attention the most for it’s mottled by a vivid scar. As though his skin were the wax of a used candle. And, unless my tear clouded eyes are now playing tricks on me as well, his right ear is completely gone.

“My partner here wanted me to check you were alright,” he says, or rather yells, holding out his hand to me. “I’m Monty.”


	5. Chapter 5

I stare at the man’s—Monty’s—hand for a few minutes until he pulls it back slowly.

“Alright then,” he mutters to himself, and steps away as if he’s going to leave me here alone. I almost reach out to him but I refrain. Or, rather, my body does the refraining for me. I’m still trembling like a spooked rabbit and my throat is definitely not going to utter sound any time soon—proven by my silent attempts to apologise.

“It’s alright,” someone else says, as I stagger to my feet, gagging on soundless words, my shoulder against the wall to support myself. I try to wipe my face discreetly but it’s no use.

“Here.” The other man’s voice is much softer than his companion’s. He holds out a neatly folded handkerchief. “You can keep it. It’s one of Monty’s anyway.”

“Hey,” the smaller man exclaims, but neither of us look at him.

I choke on an unexpected laugh and wipe my eyes on the handkerchief. When I look up with a clearer gaze I see the gentleman properly. He’s a dark-skinned fellow, taller than most, with queued black hair and kind eyes. I’ve never been this close to someone dark-skinned before but by the way he’s holding his hand just above my shoulder I immediately like him. It’s as though he’s waiting for my permission before he lays his hand upon me. I, more than most, can appreciate how much that means. If he’s trying to trick me so he can rob the clothes off my back I’ll gladly let him.

I sniffle rather pathetically and wipe at my face again before attempting a smile. I also attempt a greeting but once more my voice fails me. The choking sound that emerges makes me want to sink back down and cry again, but those kind eyes root me here, offering me a safe place to hide for a while.

Regardless, all my British apologies—sorry for disrupting your day, sorry for crying, sorry for taking your partner’s handkerchief, sorry for daring to exist in the world—build up inside me until it feels like I’ll vomit them all over this nice man’s coat. A coat, I realise with relief, is almost as finely made as my own.

Probably not a thief then. Or a really good one.

“Will you let us buy you a coffee?” he says.

“Coffee?” the man who introduced himself as Monty cries out. “Why?”

“Because it’s the decent thing to do.”

“Is it? What if he’s a thief trying to use your kindness to con you?”

“For Christ sake, Monty. He’s clearly not, and he’s right here, presumably not deaf.”

“Who’s deaf?”

I choke out another huff of laughter, as does the man beside me, who gives me a conspiratorial wink.

“What if this was me in need of a stranger’s help?” he whispers to Monty, touching his long fingers ever so lightly into Monty’s palm—so swift I would have missed it had I blinked. Monty’s whole face softens like a puppy’s, and it’s clear to everyone on Earth what his answer will be, even before he eases my arm around his shoulders so I can walk upright on my still shaking legs.

“I’m Percy,” the dark-skinned man says, as he takes my other arm gently. He doesn’t put it around his shoulders, though, as I don’t know if I could manage stooping on one side and stretching up on the other to accommodate their vast height difference.

“I-I—”

We reach the coffee shop before I can butcher my name between my teeth. Both men ease me into a chair and a steaming mug is placed before me moments later. I briefly wonder whether I should be drinking something proffered me by strangers but I don’t care if it’s poisoned.

What have I got to return to? A beating from Father. It’d almost be worth getting poisoned to avoid that.

The thought takes me off guard and another tear leaks down my cheek. I bury my face in my mug to hide it, but the coffee slopping over the edge with my trembling is a bit of a giveaway.

Monty and Percy conduct a whispered conversation beside me. Although, Monty could never become an expert in the art of whispering. While they talk over their mugs, glancing at me frequently, I get a good look at both of them. The skin around their eyes is creased in laughter lines and the light in their gaze shows a kind of happiness I thought was only found in fiction. I briefly wonder what sort of business they’re partnered in. Especially with one of them covered in scars that could only be termed piratical and the other just about dark-skinned enough that I imagine paid work isn’t easy to come by.

Perhaps they really are pirates. My blood sings a little at that—a rush spreading from the centre of my chest down to my toes.

“So who exactly are you?” Monty says, making me start rather spectacularly. Percy actually winces at the bluntness of it. I take a swallow of coffee in readiness, without the heart to say I detest the stuff. The bitterness of it clings to my tongue.

“G-Gray-G-Grayson.” Another gulp of scolding coffee. “L-Lo-rd Grayson M-M-Montague.”

Before I can get to the _Viscount of Disley_ bit of my infuriatingly long name, Monty grabs Percy’s arm with such vehemence Percy drops his mug and boiling coffee spills everywhere.

“Good God,” Monty says, blinking as if stunned, and paying no heed to the coffee spreading ever closer to the edge of the table and his lap. Percy at least grabs a cloth from the shop boy and begins to mop it up—an equally stunned look on his face. They’re both staring very intently at me and blinking in the same dazed way. The hair on the back of my neck rises as Monty leans forwards, elbow going straight into a pool of coffee that’s not yet been mopped up, and soaking a brown stain into his sleeve.

“Montague?” he asks and I nod. “As in...Henri Montague’s son? From Cheshire?”

“Y-y-yes, sir.”

“Zounds Perce,” he says, flopping back into his chair and wiping a hand over the good side of his face. “It’s the goddamn Goblin.” 


	6. Chapter 6

“What?” I ask, as both men continue staring at me.

“This gent is the Goblin!” Monty cries again, as if we didn’t hear him the first time. “My shrunken tomato of a little brother.”

“You can’t call him the Goblin to his face, Monty,” Percy scolds.

“Brother?” I’m completely lost in this conversation, a raft drifting out to sea.

What, in the name of Jesus and all his little friends, is happening?

“He’s just overexcited, my lord.” Percy takes another broad swipe at the table with the cloth.

“My lord?” Monty says, with a mockingly hurt tone to his voice. “You never called me my lord.”

“Well you’re not a lord anymore and when you were you weren’t very good at it.”

“Oi!”

“Are you...” I can’t comprehend any of this. A ringing takes up in my ears and I shake my head like a dog coming up from a swim.

“Ah, yes,” Monty says, sitting up straight, and holding out his hand as he did back in that crowd. “Terribly rude of me. Henry Montague, former lord and Viscount of Disley.”

I take his hand in my own and give him what must be the weakest handshake of all time. I’m far too shocked to grip properly. The only thing I can think is _holy shit, I’m shaking hands with my goddamn brother. Henry, abducted by pirates seventeen years ago, is sat right in front of me_ in London _and I’m shaking his bloody hand._ Then, a thought that sneaks up on me like a ghost in the dark, _I wish Seb were here._

“And...” I hardly dare ask. My heart feels as though it’s in my mouth. “And you’re P-Percy Newton?” 

“The same.” He sketches a small bow.

“As distractingly handsome as he is,” Monty interrupts, a wink towards Percy that has me thinking of all those rumours I heard from Mister Peele. “I’d have preferred a little more of a reaction to my own brotherly identity, thank you.”

Percy rolls his eyes in jest and hands the sodden cloth to the shop boy with an apologetic smile and a few coins.

I slide my still mostly full mug in front of Percy to replace the spilled one.

“I-I don’t like coffee any-anyway.”

Monty snorts. “Should have said that before I spent good money on it.”

Percy gives him _a look_ and I want to throw my arms around him. Which is a strange impulse for me to have.

Monty’s head tilts to the side. “If Felicity is to be believed Percy and I are both your brothers in a way.”

“Grayson, would you like cake?” Percy stands up sharply before I can inquire further. “Sugar, for the shock?”

“What about _my_ shock?” Monty says. “I’ve just been confronted with the goddamn Goblin.”

“You can’t call him the Goblin to his face!”

“He doesn’t mind.”

And in fact I don’t. I’m fighting a laugh with everything I’ve got—a crazed bark of a laugh that’d certainly get some looks from the stiff-lipped gentlemen around us, who’ve only just stopped looking at us after the coffee incident. For it is only men in here. All leaning close and talking in a hum of soft conversation. The only distinct noise is the bell above the door which jingles when two smartly dressed young men, both looking shifty eyed at the other customers, hurry across the shop and disappear through the back. A meeting place of some sort, it would seem. Monty and his missing ear must be quite the shock to their peace.

As if Percy’s thinking the same thing he returns from the counter with our cakes in a neat, ribboned box.

“I feel this conversation would be better had at home,” he says, with another pointed look at my brother. “You get louder when you get excited.”

Monty grins in an almost feline way.

“You’d certainly know about that, darling,” he whispers, and Percy goes a spectacular shade of red.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now I'm procrastinating my NaNoWriMo project and job applications... I've also fallen a bit (a lot!) in love with this character. Gosh darn it, Grayson. Slight Lady's Guide spoilers from here on out. Comment and kudos if you like it (they make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside). ENJOY!

I walk from the coffee shop in a daze, hardly registering the constant stream of chatter from my brother, and the much softer comments thrown in by Percy. They laugh often—that’s one thing I do register.

Their companionship seems the easiest thing in the world. It sends a little pang of homesickness through me as I’m reminded of Seb and our books. I’ve written to him every day I’ve been in London, but it’s never the same as sitting with him. He’s the one person I don’t dread talking to.

I can’t wait to tell him where I am now.

In all my imaginings, though, I never expected my brother to live in such an ordinary town house. The rooms I described with Seb in _the Swashbuckling Adventures_ were gilded, treasure pilfered through piracy piled in the corners, and a parrot swooping low from a bar in the ceiling (because what’s a pirate story without a parrot?).

In the hallway we have to fight through shoes—from practical boots to fancier heeled numbers. Both Monty and Percy add to the pile as they wade through them. Several coats have been slung on the end of the stair bannister and what looks to be a pair of breeches as well. I daren’t think how they got there.

“Sorry about the mess,” Percy has the decency to say.

“It’s not mess,” says Monty. “It’s character.”

Percy laughs.

“We do have a butler,” he continues to me. “But he only comes in when we have planned visitors—for dinners and such. And our maid only comes in to clean twice a week.”

“We prefer to be alone,” Monty says, as he gives Percy another of those winks. Percy smiles, in a way that looks a little out of his control, and brushes past him into the front room. He puts the cake box on a side table and throws a few logs onto the glowing embers in the fireplace before stabbing them with a poker until they catch.

“Tea, Monty?”

“Mmm, yes please.”

“No, I meant: can you go make tea please, Monty?”

“Oh, oh! Yes, of course.”

Monty scurries off and Percy smiles again, looking back down into the fire, flames just beginning to lick the logs.

“Seventeen years and he’s still hopeless,” he says in a fond sort of way, blowing on the fire to coax the flames higher. As he sets the poker back beside the fireplace his brow furrows.

“I’m sorry. I’ve just realised I never actually asked if you wanted to come back here. I just sort of…assumed. That wasn’t very good of me.”

“I-it’s fi-fine.”

I wring my hands together feeling suddenly very awkward.

_Is Father looking for me?_

_What will Mother think if she finds out I’ve gone off in London by myself?_

_Did they know their eldest son lived in London?_

_Why didn't my brother write to me?_

My whole life I've thought my siblings were dead, a thought my father all but confirmed, but through it all they've been perfectly well in London. I've cried and been struck and cried some more at my own goddamned loneliness, and all the while my siblings were closer than I ever could have dreamed. But they never sought me out. Perhaps never cared to. Or simply forgot I existed. In honesty, _I'd_ forget I existed if I wasn't forced to actually be me all the bloody time.

Just as I’m contemplating another escape, and weighing up how I’ll manage to get back to our apartments without coinage, there’s a crash from farther down the hall and a loud curse. Both Percy and I jump.

“Everything’s fine,” Monty shouts, before appearing a few minutes later with a flush to his dimpled cheeks and a tea tray in hand. “Although, the kettle may say otherwise.”

As he sets the tray on a low table and pours tea into three mismatched cups—that make me think the incident with the kettle wasn’t a one off act of clumsiness—I sit and take the chance to get a good look around the room.

Whilst not a large room, nor overly grand, it is comfortable. There’s a music stand in the corner beside a battered fiddle case with a pair of bullet holes etched into the side. Sheets of music spill from a box that’s too full to close and a wing backed armchair rests beside it—another by the fire with a book propped open on the arm.

In line with my piratical fantasies, the cushions and rug are in various multi-coloured patterns that appear to have come from overseas, a model ship sails across the mantel, and several artefacts that look like fossils sit in a glass fronted cabinet by the window.

“Our sister Felicity sent them,” Monty says, noticing the direction of my gaze. “Hideous things really but she’s fond of them.”

“You’re a terrible liar,” Percy laughs. “You bought that cabinet yourself to display them.”

“Only to save Felicity lecturing me when she returns.”

“Hmm.” Percy nudges Monty’s shoulder with his nose. “I don’t believe you.”

“So," Monty says, when he’s done grinning, and taken a huge bite of cake. “Tell me your life story and all that, Goblin. Who are you? What do you like? Are you as contrary as me and dear Feli?”

“Only tell us if you want to,” Percy says, handing me a tea cup.

“I-I-I want to,” I stutter, then take a pause to ready more words. “B-but I’m not…not g-good at tal-talking.”

It’s as I stutter on that statement that Monty’s gaze loses its humour. He swallows and his eyes flit down to my jaw, to the blue mark that’s probably stark against my pale skin, after crying off all my talc. My split lip has almost healed now but the mark is still there if you look close enough. Lord knows what's become of the wig I was wearing this morning.

“Father was rough on you too then?” he murmurs, and I nod. I want to launch into an explanation about how Father doesn't mean it, how it's only because of my own stupidity, and how if I'd only grow a spine he'd let me alone, but I can't seem to find a way to phrase it. Monty’s tea cup shakes in its saucer until Percy takes it from him with a gentleness that makes me want to turn away.

“B-b-b-but I ha-ha-have Seb,” I manage to get out after a lot of choking on air, and a little more willing myself not to cry.

 _Do not think about Father_ , I think. _Do not think about Father._

_Become a man, Grayson._

“Who’s Seb?” asks Monty, as if understanding my desperation not to talk about how my bruises got there, or how my nose will always be skewed slightly to the left from the time Father hit me after a few drinks, missed my jaw, and broke my nose instead. “He’s not another brother, is he?”

“No, s-s-sir. My…my f-friend. Seb P-Peele.”

Percy chokes on a piece of cake and Monty slaps him on the back.

“God in Heaven,” he whispers, when they’ve both recovered their senses. “You don’t mean to tell me... Is he in any way related to Richard Peele?”

“His f-father, sir.”

“Good lord. He’s been busy since my absence. But then…he always did have a large appetite for—”

“Watch it.”

Monty grins. “I hate Richard Peele,” he whispers into Percy’s ear.

“We hate Richard Peele!” Percy shouts so loud I jump and spill a bit of my tea. Both of them fall back into the sofa cushions laughing like school boys.

Inside the walls of this room, I’ve noticed, they’ve found a way to be constantly touching—their arms or legs resting together as they sit side by side. I doubt if they even realise it. They're also both now wearing gold rings on the third finger of their left hands—rings they certainly weren’t wearing when we were outside. Any doubts I may have had about Mister Peele’s rumours are washing away like cobwebs in the rain. And I know it’s against the law for two lads to live together as though married, my father and Seb's have given us enough talks about the sin of sodomy, but right now I can’t see the harm. The way Monty and Percy look at each other, the way they seem to just…fit together as though they were made as two halves of the same soul, fills me with hope for my own future. Hope that happiness isn’t just a fairytale told to children.  

“Why? Why do you...what…what did M-Mister Peele do to you?” I ask, Percy's shout still ringing in my ears.

Monty smirks, and receives another sharp look from Percy.

“He does _not_ mean what you think he means, Monty.”

“Quite. I shan’t hurt his delicate sensibilities. It’s a long story, little brother. Let’s just say, I hope this Seb fellow is less of a shit than his father.”

“He’s n-not at all sh-shit. He’s my b-best friend. W-we write…we w-write stories.”

“Stories?” Monty’s eyes light up. “What about?”

Heat rises up my neck all the way to my ears. It’s stupid to talk about my stories. I made this mistake once with Father and he promptly burnt the book of notes I had in my room and hit me until my vision blurred. Luckily, the rest of our notes were in Seb’s room, and we’ve kept it that way ever since.

“Pirates,” I whisper, and my two brothers grin.


	8. Chapter 8

At the mention of pirates Monty and Percy both begin talking at once, their words tripping over each other, as they fill in each other’s blanks. They say something about a box with the key to a heart, a ship called freedom, and unless I’m very much mistaken _dragons_. It’s all far more fantastical than anything Seb and I have written.

Percy’s the first one to surface from his exciting retelling—one I’m already wondering how to weave into _the Swashbuckling Adventures_ —a look of slowly sobering from a dream crossing his features.

“Maybe we should slow down,” he says, but of course Monty sally’s forth alone undeterred, describing in nauseating detail how he came to lose his ear and a large amount of his blood.

With only one of them talking it does make a little more sense. Even more so when they lead me across the hall into a much more formal parlour. There are loads more fossils in here, although these appear more scientific than decorative, and sketches of…of dragons, there’s no other word for them, are framed around the room. Some of them anatomical studies, full body and individual body parts, and others mere outlines. 

Whereas the room we were in before is a mix of colours and styles, all thrown in for comfort and personal enjoyment—Monty certainly seems one for the flamboyant—this room is its opposite. Reserved, cold, and styled in muted colours it’s like someone’s placed a sheet of muslin in front of their full colour life. I half expect to see Father leaning against the marble fireplace, holding a brandy, and telling me how much of a disappointment I am.

“Very stiff upper lip in here, isn’t it?” Monty says. “But at least there’s dragons.”

“It’s our…stage set, really,” Percy says, with a laugh to his voice, as he gestures towards a room off this one. Through the open door I can see a large writing desk, set with papers, the walls lined with leather bound books I can already guess Monty and Percy have never opened. The office does at least look as though it gets used. Broken quills and empty ink pots sit in a bucket by the door and there’s a tray on the desk full of unopened letters.

“Alexander Platt—Felicity and Johanna’s alias—just made a new scientific discovery. So, there’s been a lot of correspondence to answer this week,” Percy says, following my gaze.

“He’s our alias too,” Monty chirps up. “Earned us all a good whack of money.”

“We could buy something far bigger than this place now, but we like it here. It’s home, you know?” Percy smiles, and I wonder what it must be like to have a home. A real one. Not just somewhere to sleep.

“And staying here means we can spend more money on tailored coats and cake instead,” says Monty, rather ruining the sentimentality of it all.

“So, Felicity lives here too?” I ask, directing the question towards Percy.

“Felicity has the second floor. When she's not off exploring the far corners of the world earning our daily bread.”

“All her doors have locks on though which is rather dramatic.” Monty leans against the wall, eyes directed upwards, as if he’s trying to see right through the ceiling. “I don’t know what she's hiding from me. Even if I did stumble into her study one day I wouldn’t be able to understand a damn thing. It’s all in bloody Latin.”

“Which you only know because you _did_ go snooping in there in the pre-lock days.”

“I was not snooping, I was…investigating.”

“Investigating?”

“Yes, as her elder brother I had to check she wasn’t engaging in any sinful activities.”

“Because you’re the pillar of Christian morality.”

“Alright,” Monty sighs, but there’s humour behind it. “So I was snooping, and she found out and put locks on everything. Which is very unfun.”

“Goose,” Percy says, before turning to me. “Would you like to send a missive to your…to whoever you’re in London with?”

“Father,” I whisper, the word not more than a breath.

“Here to learn about estate management and other topics about as enjoyable as taking a bath in arsenic?”

“Monty!”

“Y-yes,” I say, around another small laugh. “P-pirates are…are mu-much more fun.”

“Hmm. Just as deadly, though, in most cases.”

“We made it out alright.” Percy jabs Monty in the stomach playfully.

“We were both shot, darling.”

“We survived, didn’t we?”

“Y-you were shot?” I ask. Monty was straight in with his harrowing ear story, but Percy never mentioned an injury. I can’t help the excitement that peaks through my voice.

“Don’t sound too thrilled,” Monty says. “He very nearly died.”

“It wasn’t the most fun, no.”

“And all that blood ruined the hat you made me, remember?”

“One good thing came of it then.” It’s Monty’s turn to jab Percy now.

“I liked that hat.”

“You _pretended_ to like that hat.”

“How could I not like it? You made it with those fine hands of yours.”

“It was awful, Monty. You looked ridiculous.”

“Ridiculously handsome.” Monty pauses and frowns slightly. “If you looked at my left side anyway. The right side…is a little ruined.”

He waves a hand towards the scarred side of his face.

“I-I like it,” I whisper, and Monty smiles. “Looks…looks piratical.”

Monty’s smile goes wider so I continue.

“And…and I bet F-Father would hate it. Which…Which m-makes it even…even better.”

“I grow fonder of you by the minute, Goblin.” Monty gives me another of those dimpled smiles, and I give him one of my own in return, although I keep my gaze fixed an inch to the left of him. I’ve never been good at eye contact.

“So,” Monty continues. “You hang around with Richard Peele’s boy, who is apparently less of a shit than his father, and you write adventure stories. What else do you do, little brother?”

The change of topic takes me off guard. I’d relaxed into the knowledge we were discussing them, not me.

“I’m not…not interesting,” I say, the only truth I really have.

“I’m sure you are.”

“I’m not. I’m…n-n-nothing.”

As I say that word _nothing_ it hits me how true it is. If I were to disappear off the face of Earth tomorrow not a single person would really care. Perhaps Seb, but then he’d find someone better to be friends with and forget me. Only my parents would even notice, and they’d certainly get over it quickly.

This isn’t the first time I’ve thought such things. It’s the first time I’ve said it aloud, though. Not that I’d ever do anything to alter my…state of existence. I’d be too afraid of the pain. Too much of a coward even to kill myself. Christ.

It’s not until Monty takes hold of my shoulders that I realise I’m trembling again, my breath coming in shallow gasps and tears stinging my eyes.

What must I look like to him? I’d wanted to be different, better, if I ever met my long-lost brother. But here I am, my pathetic self.

“Here,” he says, steering me towards the door, a kindness in his voice to rival Percy’s. “Let’s go back through to the front room. You never drank your tea.”

Once I’m seated on the sofa, a fresh cup of tea in hand, and a cake selected for me with instruction to eat it, Monty stands.

“I’m going to start dinner. Can you help me with…the thing, Perce?”

“The thing? What thing? It’s a bit early for dinner, isn’t it? It’s only five.”

“Percy,” Monty hisses, jerking his head towards the door.

“Oh, oh yes, _the thing_. Of course.”

They both scurry from the room with the subtlety of an entire herd of guilty bulls. No doubt to figure out a way of politely asking me to leave and never darken their door again. There was a reason they ran away, after all, even if Monty did skip that part of their disastrous grand tour debrief.

Perhaps I should sneak out now. Save them the bother of trying to dismiss me without hurting my feelings. That thought in mind I set down my teacup and stand, taking in the room one final time, before easing open the door and creeping into the hall.

However, once there, I find myself heading towards Monty and Percy’s voices. One more look at the man I’ve idolised my entire life. The mere idea of whom kept me going through all my darkest hours.

 I’ll get one more look at him and Percy, one more thing to tell Seb, then I’ll sneak out like a thief in the night—consoled by the fact that whilst I was a monumental disappointment on all counts, my brothers were magnificent.


	9. Chapter 9

I find Monty and Percy in the kitchen, the door ajar, which allows me a slither to peer through. They’re stood behind a solid-looking table, a few mismatched chairs tucked into it, and behind them is a long workbench. The corner of a fireplace is just visible off to the right.

“Shall we get him a carriage back then?” Percy asks, facing Monty.

“What? Back to Father?” He runs a hand through his hair, which is not quite long enough to queue. “I don’t know. I…we shouldn’t send him back. Father will beat him black and blue for disappearing like this. And you saw him, he hasn’t looked either of us in the eye the entire time he’s been here. He looks as though a stiff wind would knock him over.”

“Then what do you want to do, Monty?”

“Keep him here. Where…where it’s safe.”

“He’ll have to return at some point.”

“Why? He could run away too. Make it a Montague-Newton quartet.”

“He could.”

“I know it’s mad, but I just keep thinking of him in that crowd, when you first made me go up to him, and he looked…he looked how I’ve felt so many times.”

“Monty—”

Percy brushes a loose lock of hair from Monty’s cheek.

“I keep thinking how if you hadn’t been there,” Monty whispers and I move a step closer to hear him. “I would have left him and anything could have happened.”

“Monty, you can’t—”

“I never even thought…without me there of course Father would turn on the Goblin. I never ever _thought_ about it. He was so small when we left he wasn’t even a real person in my head.”

“You can’t blame yourself.”

“How can I not? Look what Father’s done to him since we’ve been gone? It was meant to be me who took those hits, not him. I’ve worn fear before, Perce, and my little brother in there is terrified.”

I peer farther around the door frame in time to see Percy bring Monty closer, cradling his head to his chest, and running a long-fingered hand through his hair. Hair, which I note with not insignificant jealousy, falls perfectly.

“Let’s just ask what he wants to do,” Percy says, kissing the top of Monty’s head.

“But if he wants to stay…” Monty’s voice is muffled against Percy’s chest. “It is alright, isn’t it?”

Percy cups Monty’s cheeks and tilts his face up.

“Henry Montague,” he says with a smile. “Are you asking my permission?”

“Of course, darling,” Monty responds with equal humour, stretching up on his toes to kiss him on the mouth. “Wouldn’t want to upset you.”

“He’s your brother, Monty. If he wants to stay of course he can stay.” Percy pauses. “But what if your father…if he knows where we are—”

“I have leverage there, remember? And I doubt he’d want to find us even if he knew.”

“I won’t tell Father,” I say, before I’ve thought through the fact I’m supposed to be in the front room on the sofa not snooping at my brothers through the kitchen door. They jump apart with such haste Monty trips over his own foot and Percy has to grab the back of his waistcoat to stop him pitching face first into the table.

“Christ, Goblin,” Monty says. “You scared the shit out of me.”

“I-I won’t tell…tell F-Father you’re here.”

“Thank you, Grayson,” Percy says.

“A-and I won’t…won’t t-tell him about,” I wave my hands between Percy and Monty.

“About what?” Monty asks, looking sideways at Percy.

“Y-you living…living—”

“Living in sin?” His mouth curls at the sides and his dimples appear in all their glory. Dimples we share, although, they work far better on his face than mine. All our features work better on his face than mine. “My darling brother, he already knows, and he disapproves spectacularly.”

“S-so the rumours—”

“Oh, do tell me of the rumours,” he claps his hands together in delight. “Are there ladies in Cheshire still grieving the loss of my dimples? Lads too, I imagine. Richard Peele must be inconsolable.”

“Monty,” Percy warns.

“What? You’d be inconsolable without me too.”

“I’d have a tidier house.”

“But no-one to—”

“I don’t know what you’re going to say but I know it’ll be inappropriate so don’t.”

“Where’s the fun in being _appropriate_ , darling?”

“Shall we crack on with dinner?” Percy spins around, and fumbles with one of the kitchen cupboards.

“Horrible attempt at a subject change, Perce.”

“I-I should go,” I say, edging back out the door.

“Oh, you don’t have to.”

“I’ll…leave you in...in peace.”

Monty takes a step forwards, bashes into the kitchen table, swears, and then meets my gaze with his own. We have matching eyes too, it would seem.

“Please don’t go.”

“B-but Father—”

“I’ve just been reunited with my little brother. At least stay for dinner. Father can just bloody wait. Please.”

“You know he really wants you to stay when he uses manners,” Percy interjects, unwrapping a pie from a piece of muslin.

“Ho there, I’m very respectable.”

Before we can get any further in this conversation a rushing sound takes up from outside, causing all three of us to jump, as rain begins to pound the window in a torrential downpour so heavy it feels for a moment as though it’ll break through the glass.

“Christ,” Monty says, as we all face the window. We’d been so engrossed in our talking none of us noticed the clouds darkening the kitchen. It could be late evening based solely on the premature darkness the rain’s conjured. Light flashes around the room and Monty flinches—more so when the thunder rumbles three seconds later. I count.

“Well, we certainly can’t allow you to go out in this,” Percy says, turning to face me. I fiddle with the lace at my cuffs and look down at my stocking clad feet.

“I-I don’t mind.”

Impossibly, the rain picks up even more speed, and another flash of lightning makes Monty scream.

“You should at least stay for dinner and wait for the rain to slow,” Percy tries again.  

“Abso-bloody-lutely,” says Monty, still watching the window with a concerned frown. “What kind of brother would I be if I put you out on the street in a storm?”

I shrug.

“Damnation,” Monty cries, as yet another flash of lightning illuminates the kitchen, followed immediately by a deafening crack of thunder.

“Coward,” Percy laughs.

 “We could all be struck dead at any moment. I think that’s a fairly rational fear to have. And a reason why you certainly shouldn’t be gallivanting across London, Goblin. Do you even know your way back?”

“You’re like a fussing mother hen.” Percy nudges Monty’s shoulder. “You could stay the night, though, if you want. We have room. Then go back to your father when the weather’s cleared tomorrow morning.”

“I-I don’t want…don’t want to put you out.”

“Zounds, Goblin,” Monty says, around another storm-induced flinch. “It’s hardly putting us out.”

“Will…won’t Father—”

“I used to stay out all night regularly when I was supposed to be in his care. Stay the night and let Father sweat. Then in the morning I’ll put you in a carriage myself and we’ll make up a frightfully exciting reason for your disappearance. We can even say you were waylaid by pirates, if you really want to.”

“That one might be overused now,” says Percy.

“Highwaymen then. Or a harem of girls dragged you into their abode because they found your dimples too impossible to resist and kept you there all night.”

“Are you making up an alibi or just remembering moments from your youth?”

I laugh before I can stop myself and Monty’s dimples come into play again in a rakish smile.

I nod. “Alright.”

“Alright?”

“I-I’ll stay.”

“Fantastic.” Monty takes hold of the pie with two hands like it’s some grand offering. “Are you hungry?”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick note to say thank you. I wrote Goblin's Guide in a mental health slump as IRL I'm a querying author and all the stress was taking the pleasure from writing. The fact so many of you have read, commented, and kudosed (is kudosed a word?) this little piece of rambling is incredible to me. Thank you!! 
> 
> Also, I watched Mackenzi Lee's Instagram live this morning (she saved it into her stories) and soooo many people were asking about the Goblin. (I was incredibly tempted to mention this fanfic but I chickened out because I was on my personal account *wrist slap*.) It was confirmed the Goblin's canon name is Adrian, though, so let's just look past that not-so-small detail when I continue to call him Grayson...awks.

I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed an evening quite so much as this one with Monty and Percy. The fire crackles through the darkness as rain continues to pummel the windows and Monty jumps at every noise vaguely resembling thunder. Even when, more often than not, it’s just a carriage rolling past the house.

The food is pretty terrible—in the process of heating up the pie Monty managed to burn it in some spots and leave it cold in others—but the company more than makes up for it. And, as it turns out, I'm rather ravenous. I’ve gone the day without eating before, my anxiety can take up more than a few meals worth of space in my stomach, but today’s been more trying than most. Once the nerves recede it's all I can do to stop myself grabbing fistfuls of pie and shoving it into my gob with the sort of decorum that'd earn me a slap at home.

They both seem to sense my unwillingness to talk about myself. Perhaps I scared them earlier with my sudden anxiety attack and they don’t wish to witness it again. Regardless of the reason, they refrain from asking me anything directly and instead talk about their own daily lives. I hear about their year living destitute in Moorfields, about the _many_ domestic disasters as they adapted from privileged to penniless, and even get to hear Percy play a short song on his fiddle—which he then uses to great comedic effect to tease Monty as he tries to tell me how hard losing his looks was.

It’s gone midnight before I’m shown up to their spare room. Or, as Monty calls it, _solitary confinement_. It is, apparently, the room he is exiled to if he pisses off Percy. Although, by the sounds of it, that's only happened a handful of times. A simply dressed but comfortable-looking bed sits along one wall, with a bedside table containing a candle and a tinder box. My face aches from smiling.

“I’ll lend you one of my nightshirts,” Percy says. “Monty’s would barely fit a child.”

“I heard that,” Monty says, jabbing Percy’s shoulder, as he passes and disappears into the room beside the one I am to occupy. He leaves the door open and I catch sight of a wardrobe leaking clothes in every colour and a bedside table littered with burnt down candle stubs.

And a bottle of liniment I really wish I’d _not_ seen.

I may be inexperienced in regard to all forms of sexual intercourse, but I’m not ignorant to them. I went to boarding school for goodness sake. 

Monty throws a bundle of white material at Percy who catches it and hands it to me. I’m not overly small, but I’m not overly tall either, so Percy’s nightshirt will certainly be too long, but it'll be better than nothing.

Percy fiddles with the ring on his left hand.

“I…” he starts, seems to reconsider, then blurts, “You don’t appear surprised that Monty and I are…together.”

“I-I don’t…don’t mind,” I respond in as earnest a voice as I can.

“Did your father tell you?”

“Mister Peele.”

“I hate Richard Peele,” Percy murmurs, as if the sentiment is a knee-jerk reaction to hearing Mister Peele’s name. Behind him the ropes creak as Monty climbs into bed. Percy glances over his shoulder then looks back at me. “He’s very pleased to have found you.”

I nod.

“I know Monty can be full on sometimes, but he… Look, don’t tell him we’ve had this chat, but it took him a very long time to stop believing all the things your father told him. He still struggles with it sometimes. More often than he lets on. And I want you to know whatever foul things your father has told you are false as well.” He holds my gaze in a look I’d imagine fathers give their children when imparting on them some wise, reassuring speech. The kind I could have used before my final Eton exams, when I spent the night so nervous I vomited until I was naught but a husk.

“You’re not nothing, Grayson Montague,” Percy says. “You deserve space in this world. Far more than your father.”

I nod again, like a woodpecker without a tree.

“I’m glad we found you too,” Percy continues, with such a kind smile there’s a real risk I’ll become a puddle of tears on this floor if he doesn’t leave soon. “Sleep well.”

When the door closes behind him there’s a movement of bed covers and a murmur of conversation, before Percy shouts “WE HATE RICHARD PEELE!” again so loud I swear a horse outside rears. The air is torn apart by Monty and Percy’s stifled laughter for a good few minutes before it goes quiet. 

Once I've washed and changed for bed, I wait for a long time stood beside the bed I’m to sleep in, fiddling with the sleeves of Percy’s nightshirt that pool over my hands. When I’m certain Monty and Percy are asleep I creep back out onto the landing and down the stairs on the tips of my toes.

One perk of being forever invisible is it gives one fantastic abilities at sneaking. Or at least, it does, when the stairs aren’t so goddamned squeaky.

I walk on the edges of each step, pressed to the wall to minimise the noise, and go as slowly as I can. My heart beats behind my ribs as if I’m performing some high stakes pirate mission.

Unsurprisingly I make it downstairs without incident and creep through the formal parlour, trying not to look at the dragon pictures which are a lot more frightening in the dark, and into the office. As I expected, there’s another tray of letters on the opposite side of the desk to the one I saw earlier, these ones all addressed in the same neat handwriting and bearing stamps. The outgoing letters.

After a bit of rummaging I locate the necessary materials and set about composing a missive to Seb.

 _At present_ , I begin, pausing after each word to check the scratching of the quill hasn’t somehow been amplified into a large enough sound to wake the two men upstairs. One of whom is partially deaf. _I am sitting in a dark office,_   _in the dead of night, at the desk of one Henry Montague and Percy Newton…_

I grin as I imagine the shriek of excitement that will escape Seb when he reads this and get to detailing the rest of my frankly absurd day.

 _It has been quite the swashbuckling adventure_ , I conclude, what must be at least an hour later. _I only wish I could have shared it with you. G._

Once finished I sheath my sizeable missive in an envelope, locate a stamp, and hide it amongst the pile of other outgoing letters. I can only hope it is sent without discovery. I have no idea how Percy and Monty would react if they knew someone back in Cheshire had been told their location.

Satisfied with myself I creep back up the stairs and fall asleep almost before my head has touched the pillow. Maybe, just maybe, I am good for something after all.


	11. Chapter 11

In contrast to the day previous morning dawns bright and sunny. The sounds of street sellers mingled with birdsong greet me as I wake.

For a moment I’m completely disorientated. My pillow smells different—a musty, unused smell, with the scent of laundry soap sitting beneath it, and not at all like me.

When I open my eyes, squinting at the light through a gap in the curtains, yesterday comes back piece by piece and I sit bolt upright. The room spins for a moment, spots blooming in my vision, before I adjust to being awake.

I realise quite soon that it’s later than I usually rise. On an ordinary day I’m up and dressed before six. My anxious disposition doesn’t allow my thoughts to rest for long. That and it’s always advisable, when Father is in residence, to be up and breakfasted before he rises.

When I make it downstairs the grandfather clock in the hall shows it’s nearly eight which is the latest I’ve slept in as long as I can remember—I used to drive my nursemaids insane.

“Good morning, Goblin.”

I shriek and turn from the clock. Monty stands in the kitchen doorway holding a dented kettle. He’s still wearing his nightshirt with an unbuttoned banyan thrown over it.

“Breakfast?”

Without waiting for an answer he turns and I hear him clattering around with the breakfast things. There’s the faint aroma of burning, but I have a feeling that’s always around at meal times.

Now it's light I can make out several burnt rings on the surface of the table. A rack of toast, caught around some of the edges, sits in the middle with a dish of butter and a jar of marmalade. Monty pours a cup of tea, slides it across to me, then flops into the chair opposite the one I’ve settled into clutching a mug of coffee. I have the urge to apologise again, for my not liking coffee and thus leading him to believe he had to make a whole pot of tea just for me, but I’ve still not woken enough for words to form quickly.

“The first time I made toast without setting it alight,” Monty says, smiling. “Percy actually cheered. The patronising shit.”

I snort and Monty’s mouth twitches upwards at the corners. He seems more subdued this morning—less like he’s trying to prove something. I suppose there isn’t anything to prove when you’re around me.

“Why d-d-didn’t you write to me?” I whisper, before my tongue has time to register the words forming. My cheeks immediately set to burning.

“Ah.” Monty puts down his coffee. “Honestly? I didn’t think anyone back home wanted me to. When you were a baby I wrote to Father and told him I wasn’t coming back. Told him to give all my titles to you. He then spread around the rumour we’d been kidnapped by pirates—I suppose that was better to him than admitting I’d run off to live in penniless sin with a lad. So, I assumed it was preferable for all parties if I…disappeared. I’m ashamed to say I never even gave you a thought.”

I’d suspected as much but it still stings.

“I’m sorry,” I mutter, my gaze lowering to the scratched table top.

“You don’t have a thing to be sorry for.”

“I-I should…shouldn’t have stayed.”

Monty takes my hand—the gesture so unexpected I jump.

“What Percy said last night,” he says. “About you deserving to take up space in the world, is true. You don’t have to keep apologising for existing.”

“You heard that?”

“I’m only half-deaf, you know.”

I laugh and he tips an imaginary cap with the hand he’s now withdrawn from mine.

“Are you heading off this morning or did you want to stay for a little longer?”

“I-I…would…would you m-mind?”

“Mind if you stayed? Of course not, you goose. Stay as long as you like. Zounds, you can stay forever if you really want to put up with me that long. We have a spare room.”

I nod, feeling oddly close to tears, for the opposite reason to my usual emotional outbursts. Monty, as if noticing my frantic blinking, takes a loud slurp of coffee and changes the topic.

“So,” he says, drawing out the word. “You and this Seb fellow?”

“Y-yes?”

“Are you friends in the biblically approved way, or in the…much more fun Monty and Percy way?”

“Oh! No. J-just friends. I-I think. How…how can you tell?”

“Well, do you ever want to stick your tongue in his mouth?”

“No!”

“Ah, then your friendship is of the platonic kind. Which is a great shame. I had hoped for more from the son of Richard Peele.”

I pour milk into my tea so I don’t have to make eye contact.

“Was he…”

“A sodomite? He certainly was…is. Not that he ever acknowledged it further than a very quick romp behind the hedges. He had no stamina what so ever.”

Monty stops talking as a tousle-haired Percy chooses that moment to emerge, places a quick kiss to the top of Monty’s head, and flops into the chair beside him.

“Who has no stamina?”

“Certainly not you.”

I put my head down on the table with a groan and both men laugh. Monty even messes a hand through my hair in such a brotherly way a blush of warmth spreads through my chest.

Zounds, I never want to leave this house.

“C-can I stay?” I murmur into the table. “For a…a little while?”

When I look up both Monty’s boyish dimples are out in full force.

“As long as you need, little brother.”

Percy finishes pouring himself a coffee and takes a sip—his eyes losing a little of their sleep fog.

“Provided you can put up with our cooking,” he says, leaning his head against Monty’s shoulder with a yawn.

“Speak for yourself, darling,” Monty says, nudging him. “I am a veritable master of cookery.”

“If charcoal is your favourite flavour. Speaking of, anyone want some toast?”


	12. Chapter 12

By some extraordinary stroke of luck I end up being the one to sort the outgoing letters the following morning. When Monty and I leave for the post office, though, Percy stays at home. Something to do with the postal workers refusing to serve him. I never even thought to consider that, and it makes me feel sick to think of the kindest man I know being mistreated. It’s a wonder to me people don’t fall to their knees before him—a sentiment I made the mistake of saying aloud to Monty on our walk. I certainly hadn’t meant it the way he interpreted. 

I write countless letters to Father over the next four days which all end up on the fire. I know I need to tell him where I am—the last he saw me I was running from his club in a fit of panic and tears. But then I’m not sure whether that would make him more or less worried for my safety. Perhaps my fleeing was the final nail in my coffin. Perhaps he doesn’t want me back at all. I’ll be cut off like my siblings. And while that should satisfy me it fills me with such panic I’ve twice had to run to the spare room so Monty and Percy don’t see me crumble. Monty never mentions my red eyes afterwards, but Percy’s always there with a cup of tea, a biscuit, and an offer to talk if I need to.

Managing an estate is all I’ve worked for. What am I without my titles?

It’s as I’m composing my fifth letter to Father in the front room, my brothers preparing lunch in the kitchen, that the doorbell shrieks through the house. I jump, blotting the page, and wait for the door to be answered.

What if it’s Father?

Or Mother?

I’m not sure which would be worse.

My heart rate increases more with each second, but no-one answers the door. Monty and Percy’s loud conversation hasn’t even paused—laughter echoes around the kitchen as the doorbell rings a second time.

With shaking legs I ease myself up off the sofa and put down my writing utensils. The grandfather clock ticks in time with my heartbeat as I wait on the other side of the closed door for a full minute before pulling it open.

If I’d been holding anything I would have dropped it at the sight of who’s on the other side.

“Seb!” I yell. “W-what are you…you doing he-here?”

His face breaks into a wide grin, large teeth fully on show, and the rain clinging to his dark fringe drips into his eyes.

“I snuck out.”

“What?”

“Just like in the Swashbuckling Adventures.” He’s out of breath and his eyes are watery with excitement. “I got your letter when Father was out, and Mother never would have let me come, but I knew I had to be here. I’d regret it until the end of my days if I had the chance to meet Henry Montague and didn’t. He’s basically our hero.

“So, I thought, what would Henry do? And I remembered that chapter we wrote about him tying together bedsheets and climbing out the window to escape enemy pirates, so I thought I’d give it a go. Once Mother had gone to bed I got all the sheets I could, because the first rule of sneaking surely is not walking out the bloody front door where I could have been spotted by the staff.

“Anyway, it didn’t go as smooth as all that, because it turns out I’m not very good at tying knots. But I only have a few cuts and bruises, no broken bones, and I managed to hire a coach down to London. Then it was just trying to find this house without getting murdered which wasn’t easy, I got pick pocketed outside St. Paul’s, but I did it. I’ve been on a proper adventure, G. An actual bloody adventure!”

This is all far too much information for me to process so I stand there completely mute. Behind me someone clears his throat.

“Henry Montague is your hero, is he?” my brother croons. One look over my shoulder tells me he’s wearing a roguish, infuriating smile.

“Christ,” Percy groans.

“He won’t save you, darling.” Monty holds out his hand towards Seb, who is practically vibrating at this point. His face is so red I think it might explode at any moment from the amount of blood that’s rushed there. “Henry Montague, but you can call me Monty.”

And then Seb faints. Actually bloody swoons and drops like a piece of limp lettuce. Monty, as though he’s well versed in catching people mid-collapse, helps him safely to the floor with a hand beneath his head.

There’s no way I could have acted as fast. I’m still far too overwhelmed by the sheer amount of words Seb just vomited all over me, and the fact he’s actually here. In London. At my brother’s house. My real brother who we made up stories about for years. And who I’m pretty sure now knows we wrote stories about him, which is just mortifying.

Percy, being the biggest of us all, scoops Seb up and deposits him on the sofa.

“Well caught,” he says to Monty.

“I’ve had some practice,” he murmurs back, and gives Percy's hand a squeeze. They're interrupted in their slightly nauseating pursuit of gazing lovingly at each other when Seb surfaces with a gasp, as if he were a moment from drowning.

“Little Peele,” Monty says, letting go of Percy's fingers. “Pleasure to meet you.”


	13. Chapter 13

Seb’s in and out of his swoon for a half of an hour before he can be coaxed to sit up. He stays on the sofa, legs still stretched out, folding and unfolding his hands in a daze. It looks as though he’s been clubbed over the head as he glances at each of us in turn. His gaze settles on Monty. In fairness, it’s hard not to focus on Monty, with his features too pretty for his own good, and the right side of his face mottled by burns.

“Are you really pirates?” Seb croaks, his throat bobbing in a hard swallow, eyes flitting towards the scar where Monty’s right ear should be.

“The fiercest of them all.”

“Monty,” Percy scolds.

“I slit the throats of innocents for breakfast.”

Seb’s eyes widen and his face goes even whiter than usual—the pox marks on his cheeks stark against his pallor.

“Henry Montague, for Christ sake.” Percy steps forwards, his hands raised as if to prove he isn’t armed. “We are not pirates, and he is about as threatening as your average house-trained corgi dog. Albeit barely house-trained.”

Monty gasps in mock outrage and places a hand over his heart.

“I am highly house-trained. I’ve not shit on the floor in weeks.”

Percy snorts an involuntary laugh, which he quickly stifles behind his hand, and Monty smiles looking very pleased with himself.

“To clarify,” he says to Seb, who impossibly seems even more startled. “I’ve never shit on the floor.”

“I’m sure you have.” Percy elbows him. “In your drunk days.”

“Alright, then I’ve never—”

“But in your letter,” Seb murmurs to me, interrupting the two older men. Before I can figure out a way to silently communicate the fact those same men do not know about said letter, Seb withdraws it from his coat pocket—the creases now so worn with being folded and unfolded it’s hopefully illegible. “You said they fought with pirates to save sea dragons.”

“We did do that!” Monty says. “Percy got shot, and I got these powder burns on my hand. Look.”

He holds his hand an inch from Seb’s eyes, showing him the fainter version of the scars on the right side of his face. Percy pulls Monty’s hand back—squeezing once before letting go.

“Being caught in one piratical incident doesn’t make us actual pirates.”

“But it does make us rather impressive, Captain Two Tooth.”

Percy smiles again and laughs softly. “If you say so.”

“My dear brother here has written entire novels about us, Perce, the rumours back in Cheshire have to be at least somewhat impressive for all that. Before I demand to read them all, though, just to see how heroic I am, I would very much like to know what else you wrote about us in this letter, Goblin.”

He goes to take the pages from Seb but to my surprise—for I would have surrendered them whether I wanted to or not—he snatches them back. I swallow, but before I can intervene Seb sits up straighter and frowns towards Monty, all reverence gone from his features.

“Goblin?”

“It’s wh-what he c-c-calls me,” I mutter. “Don’t know wh-why.”

“G’s not a goblin, sir.” He spits the title like an unwanted pip. “He’s a first-rate fellow. The best of them, actually.”

“Th-th-thank you but it's al-alright.”

Seb takes no heed of my protest and ploughs on. He’s always got hot under the collar when it comes to people calling me names. Once when we were younger and a lad from chess club mocked my stutter he actually slapped him. The lad squealed to his mother and we were both grounded for a week but it was worth it.

“You don’t get to call him names,” Seb continues. His fingers tremble where they are clenched around the letter. He’s always a nervous wreck after a confrontation but it still never stops him standing up for what he believes in. “That isn’t good of you at all. Just because you’re older and his brother that doesn’t give you the right to be rude. In fact it gives you less right. You're family which means you’re supposed to be kind.”

It’s Monty’s turn to look dumbfounded now. He’s gaping like a fish, although, he hides it quickly with a rakish smile.

“I see you inherited some of your father after all,” he croons. “So feisty.”

Seb looks so angry now I actually fear for his health. And my brother’s. Maybe he’ll be the recipient of Seb’s second slap.

“I am _not_ like my father,” he says in a tight voice. “My father’s a…a…a penis.”

Both Monty and Percy burst into laughter—the sort of uncontrollable mirth that seems to take everyone by surprise. Before long we’re all at it, tears rolling down our faces, and stomach muscles aching. I haven’t laughed like this in a long while.

“I like you, Peele,” Monty splutters when we begin to surface. “I think we shall get along just fine.”

Seb meets his gaze with a level stare.

“I’m still making up my mind about you, Montague. If you stop calling my best friend a goblin then I’m sure I’ll start to like you too.”

Monty gives Percy a look that seems to beg for backup but Percy just shrugs.

“Don’t look at me. I did tell you to stop calling him the Goblin.”

“His name’s Grayson.”

“He’s also right here,” Monty says.

“Oh bother. I’m sorry G. I just…you know how I feel about people being rude.”  

“I wasn’t being rude!”

“You were,” Seb mutters. Monty goes to retort, but Percy steps between them with his hands raised.

“Enough. Monty, come with me, we’re going to make tea.”

“But—”

“I said enough. Come on.” He takes Monty’s sleeve and practically drags him to the door. “It is so nice to meet you, Mister Peele,” he calls back over his shoulder.

“You never called Richard _Mister Peele_ ,” I hear Monty say in a sulky voice.

“That’s because I hate Richard Peele.”

“We hate Richard Peele!” Monty shouts. Seb jumps and looks over at me.

“What was that about?”

“P-p-rivate joke, I-I think.”

“Hmm. Then Father being a prick clearly isn’t a recent development.” He smiles and it makes me feel real for the first time in weeks.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got an R&R from an agent IRL—sagging middle syndrome, awks—which is bad because of all the editing/restructuring/overhauling I need to do now, but good because it means an agent is at least somewhat interested in my book! I’ll try to keep updating this story on the regular but if I go a little while without posting please know I haven’t forgotten you! This fanfic still means a great deal to me, as do all you amazing readers (there’s almost 600 of you now!!!), and I will reach the conclusion of Grayson’s tale as soon as poss.

Having Seb in the Montague-Newton household is almost more surreal than meeting my brothers in the first place.

We take tea in the front room with Monty and Seb exchanging nothing more than a few stony glances. Percy and I fumble for a conversation but nothing takes hold. Seb for his part looks as though the rain water soaking him has finally reached the skin. He trembles with cold as he sits steaming by the fire—literally and figuratively—clutching his teacup. His knapsack sits in an equally sorry state in the middle of the room. It went forgotten on the front step for over an hour so when we finally haul it inside everything is soaked through and dripping.

“I can hang your clothes to dry in the laundry room, if you like,” Percy says, another hack through the silence.

“Laundry room?” I ask.

“The little room behind the fireplace in the kitchen. We think it was meant to be a pantry but it’s beastly hot in there when the kitchen fire’s lit. Your things will certainly dry before nightfall.”

He addresses the last part to Seb who nods. He has that dazed look to him again as he kneels down on the floor and begins to rummage through his bag—removing an array of random items that show he packed in a hurry. All the garments are rumpled beyond belief and there isn’t a matching outfit among them. I bend down to help him peel each item apart and he gives me a half-smile.

“It is alright that I came, isn’t it?” he whispers.

“O-of course.”

Seb gives me a much more earnest smile this time.

“Good because I was deathly bored without you. I was even considering going back down to that blasted chess club.”

I snort a laugh as Seb looks up at Monty and Percy.

“Here, I’ll take them through for you,” Percy says, holding out his arms for Seb’s clothes.

“I can help. If you want.”

“No need. I’ll be right back. Why don’t you three use this time to…mend your broken bridges? Monty, you can start.”

“Why me?”

“Because you’re the eldest.”

“That’s hardly fair.”

Percy laughs, shaking his head, as he leaves with the bundle of dripping clothes. Monty’s expression soon changes from one of indignation to utter delight, though, when he looks down and his gaze fixes on a bundled parcel Seb removed from the centre of his bag earlier. It looks ever so slightly damp but the rest of Seb’s things seem to have kept the books mostly dry.

“Y-you brought…brought our b-books?” I ask Seb.

“Should I not have?” He folds and unfolds his hands nervously as he sits back down on the chair by the fire and I take the one opposite him.

“Are these…” Monty seizes one of the books—the pages ever so slightly warped from damp. “ _The Swashbuckling Adventures of Henry and Felicity Montague_.”

He grins, equal parts charming and worrisome, as he flips open the cover.

“Please don’t read it,” Seb says. I want to say the exact same thing, but as usually happens in moments of panic, my voice has stopped working. To my great surprise Henry—Monty—actually puts the book down. Albeit with a lingering, forlorn look at the front cover and a hand upon its spine for a few seconds too long.

“What’s in it that I’m not permitted to see?”

“Nothing,” Seb and I say in unison.

“Oh.” There’s nothing charming in Monty’s smile now. He’s pure rake. “An awful lot of nothing by the look of it.” Monty pauses, counting. “Twelve books of nothing.”

“Nothing as exciting as your real life,” Seb says. Once again he doesn’t see my _shut up now_ look. “The one Grayson wrote to me about.”

“Ah, yes,” Monty fixes his gaze on me. “The letter.”

I shrink back without thought—my body instinctively expecting a smack—but before he can chastise me for giving up his secret location a crash sounds out in the hall.

I’m about to laugh, thinking Percy must have suffered an act of Monty-style clumsiness, when Monty’s face goes deathly serious and he runs from the room faster than I thought him capable.

“Percy!” he yells, his voice pitched higher than usual.

I glance once at Seb and we follow. Then draw up short.

Percy’s lying on his back in the hall, his body convulsing violently, a spot of vividly red blood sliding down the side of his face from an open cut at his temple. His teeth squeak as they grind together and the tendons in his neck strain as if they’ll snap. It looks as though he’s fighting against some deadly force we are unable to see. 

“Holy shit,” Seb mutters beside me, clasping his fingers together with such force his knuckles crack.

Seb’s voice breaks me out of whatever trance the sight of Percy put me into and my body moves quite without my mind telling it to. I watch as if I’m floating above myself as I kneel down beside Percy to help hold him on his side. Monty's already balled up one of the coats from the bannister under Percy's head to stop him smacking into the wooden floor and a bloom of crimson seeps into the silk. 

I doubt Percy can hear anything, I certainly hope he’s not conscious in there, but still Monty keeps talking to him. He mutters over and over how much he loves him, how he’s right there, that everything will be alright. All the while he firmly holds his shoulder with one hand and smooths his hair with the other as Percy continues to convulse.

The calmness with which Monty’s handing this calms me down too. Although, my heart doesn’t get that message, it pounds behind my ribs so fast the front of my shirt jumps.

“What do we do?” Seb asks, his voice shaking as if he's close to tears.

“We wait for him to come out of it,” says Monty. “It won’t be long.”

As he speaks, voice tight and quiet, his eyes remain fixed on Percy’s face. Another trickle of blood, mixed with spit, slides down from his mouth and wavers with each uneven breath until Monty wipes it away. Waiting seems like the exact opposite of what we should be doing. A bruise is already swelling around the cut on Percy’s head. There are doubtless other bruises beneath his clothes if he fell hard enough to hit his head like that. Not to mention the agony of his muscles being so clenched up for this long. 

I don’t even notice Seb leave but when he returns he kneels with us and puts down a bowl of fresh water. Wetting a cloth he holds it aloft, like he’s ready to dive right on that swollen wound the moment Percy falls still. If he falls still.

Sweat dampens my entire body, rolling down my back, and tears cloud my vision but I blink them away.

When Percy’s convulsions finally cease with one more, violent clench of his muscles Monty leans forwards and presses his lips to the spot beside the bruise.

“You’re alright,” he mutters again, pressing another kiss to his temple, and running his fingers through his coarsely curled hair. “We’re right here, darling.”

Percy doesn’t respond, but when I reach down and fold my fingers around his, he squeezes back.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today it was announced that Lady's Guide was 5th in the Goodreads 'Best YA Fiction' category--clocking in almost 18,000 votes, wowza! (It's also been nominated in a few categories for the Epic Reads awards so go vote for those.) Three cheers to Mackenzi Lee (#authorgoals) and to celebrate here's another chapter about our beloved Goblin.

Seb, Monty, and I help get Percy upstairs and tucked into bed. Percy stirs as we set him down, Monty’s name the first slurred word from his lips, and he presses his face against my brother’s chest.

“I’m right here, Perce,” Monty says, smoothing Percy’s hair back. “I’m not going anywhere.”

And then quite without warning Percy—strong, kind, brilliant Percy—starts to cry. Monty only hold him tighter, curling his body around Percy’s, still whispering declarations of love into his ear. I tug Seb’s cuff and we silently retreat.

“You alright?” Seb says as soon as we’ve made it downstairs and Percy’s crying has silenced. In the quiet each sound seems magnified, each tick of the clock and creaking floorboard, so even though Seb speaks in a whisper I flinch.

When I don’t respond Seb lays a steadying hand on each of my shoulders and meets my gaze.

“Grayson?”

“Yes,” I croak. “I-I’m fine.”

It’s a ridiculous question, to ask how I am, when Percy’s the one who had a bleeding fit.

“Y-you?”

“Of course I’m alright.” He gives me one of his toothy smiles. “I’m with you.”

“At H-Henry Mon-Montague’s h-house.”

“Isn’t it excellent?”

I grin back at him, forgetting myself momentarily, then sober.

“Are…are y-you surprised?”

“About what?”

“M-Monty and Percy. How they…how they a-are. How they li-li-live.”

“No. Father already told us Henry Montague preferred the company of lads. When you mentioned in your letter that he lives with Percy Newton it wasn’t exactly a leap to put those facts together and arrive at this conclusion.”

“Seb…” I pause to ready the words I feel I have to tell him. “I think…I th-think Monty and your f-father…I think they…c-c-copulated?”

I peak the sentence into a question so there’s a smidge of room to double back on myself should Seb react badly, but instead his eyes light up.

“I knew it!” he exclaims, clapping his hands as if he’s congratulating himself for being on the favourable side of a bet.

“Y-you did?”

“Well, he was always so passionate during those _sodomy is a sin_ lectures. No-one can be that anti-anything without it being a cover for those same feelings residing in one’s self.”

A bark of laughter escapes me.

“H-h-ow long…how l-long have you th-th-thought this?”

Seb shrugs.

“Since forever. I just…I don’t know. I suppose it was just a guess, really, until now.”

“So you’re not…not o-opposed to how my brothers l-live?”

“Why should I be? None of my bloody business who two people want to play _how’s your father_ with, is it? Provided they’re both in agreement on the matter. Besides, I strive to be fine with anything that would piss off old Dicky.”

“Your f-father’s the same age as…as Monty.”

“Yes, well…maybe suppressing his true desires has aged him prematurely.”

“Maybe,” I say around a laugh.

“He should just yield to them.”

“Your mother may…may not like that.”

“Ah, yes, but Mother needn’t know. He hasn’t visited her rooms in years. And he’s done enough horrid things to her that I doubt she’d bat an eye.”

Part of the reason Seb and I first bonded was over our mutual dislike of our fathers. Whenever times are hard we can always fall back on complaining about them.

Unlike my own father Mr Peele has never been physically violent. He attacks instead with words meant to undermine and humiliate. Embarrassing someone, under the guise of a jest, is his favourite way to pass the time. It’s made him a few friends, as equally horrid as him, and also a good deal of enemies. Monty and Percy among them it would seem. Seb, however, saw the way his father’s actions often left people red cheeked or in tears and instead developed a fierce protective instinct, alongside the desire to be absolutely nothing like the man who sired him.

Having been at the receiving end of a lot of his supposed jokes, mostly on account of my stutter, I’m definitely in support of Seb’s wishes.

We stay downstairs for the next few hours, cleaning the sick and blood off the hallway floor, then just talking in the easy way we always talk. In the moments where it’s too hard to speak, when my mind stops sending the instructions I’m giving to my mouth, we pass notes instead.

The house steadily turns from morning to afternoon and falls into the muted darkness of dusk as we sit at the kitchen table going back over one of our pirate books—laughing often at the difference between the fictional and real Henry.

“Laundry,” Seb says suddenly, and I start.

“Hmm?”

“My clothes. Percy was hanging them up before… I should see to them.”

“Oh.” My stomach gives a loud grumble then and I sit up straighter. We’ve been nibbling on leftover cakes through the afternoon and Seb’s an expert in tea making so we’ve had our fair share of that too but it strikes me suddenly that Monty’s not had anything to eat since his toast this morning.

“I-I’ll take…take Monty some f-food,” I say, rising to my feet and sizing up the contents of the cupboard. There are three eggs, half a loaf, and a block of cheese wrapped in cloth. There’s also a mouldering potato at the back which I’d rather just pretend doesn’t exist.

At a loss on how exactly to cook the eggs I settle for just slicing the bread and cheese onto a plate instead.

 When I arrive with it upstairs it’s to find Percy sound asleep and snoring softly, his face pressed into his pillow, and Monty seated on the bed beside him keeping a vigil with his arms wrapped around his knees. He doesn’t even stir until I put the tray on top of the covers—the side tables too cluttered to allow anything more atop them.

He starts rather spectacularly and nearly tips the tray up as he turns to face me. It’s only the fact I’ve not fully let go that stops it pitching its contents all over the floor.

“What’s this,” he says, taking in the sight of my offerings. Alongside the bread and cheese there’s a cup of coffee and one of wine as well. I couldn’t decide which would be better suited to the occasion so went with both.

“D-dinner.”

“What time is it?”

“Almost…almost seven.”

“Damnation, sorry. I hadn’t realised it was so late. I should have...sorry.”

He rubs a hand over his face and looks back down at the food.

“It…it’s alright. Are you…did you or…or Percy n-need any-anything?”

“No. No. We’re…well, not fine, but fine-adjacent at least.” He’s quiet for a little while and I think he’s gone back to his watch over Percy until he speaks again.

“There wasn’t any warning this time,” he whispers. “Usually there’s something—a strange feeling or a sensitivity to light or drowsiness or a change of mood…” He scrubs at his hair and tries to smile. “Sorry, it always puts me out of sorts a bit more when it happens without any warning like this, but you shouldn’t worry about me. Percy’s the one who needs attention now.”

He smiles fondly at Percy’s sleeping form and leans forwards to tuck a strand of his hair away from where it’s fallen across his face.

“W-will he be al-alright?” I ask.

“Yes, of course.” Monty gives me what I think is meant to be a reassuring smile but he looks too exhausted for it to bring out the dimples. “He’ll be sore and drowsy is all. Might vomit a few more times.”

I nod and Monty wraps his arms tighter around his knees.

“Sometimes he’s up and about in a few days,” he continues. “Other times it takes a week or so. I think this’ll be one of the long recoveries as he hit his head but he’ll be fine. I’ve forbidden him from being anything else. I just wish I could go through it for him.”

“What…what if you hadn’t…h-hadn’t been here?”

“Then someone else would have been. I only leave him on days when our maid comes in and she’s been informed of Percy’s illness. He’s very rarely on his own. Luckily, he seems to enjoy my company, so it’s not a problem.”  

I pause, then without giving myself time to think too much about it, I walk forwards and pat his shoulder. It’s not the most comforting thing I could have done, but it’s…something.

“Thank you,” Monty whispers, a catch in his voice. “For being here. For helping.”

“It’s what…what brothers are f-for.”

“Abso-bloody-lutely.” He’s quiet for a while. “But thank you anyway. It means a lot to me. To both of us. _You_ mean a lot to us.”

My eyes prickle as I leave Monty to his eating and Percy-staring. With Seb, our importance to each other is an unspoken understanding, but to hear it aloud is an awfully grand thing.


	16. Chapter 16

Percy remains abed for the next few days. Monty gets conversation out of him, and encourages him eat a little, but otherwise he just sleeps. The cut on his head, though, is much less severe than we originally thought once properly cleaned and scabbed over. Only a deep purple bruise sits in evidence of how hard he fell.

It’s not until the forth day of his invalidity, when I go in to check on him during one of Monty’s few absences—in which we have to drag him downstairs to eat and drink—that I find Percy awake and sitting up.

“Sorry,” Percy mutters as I enter, his voice still weak and scratchy.

“F-for wh-what?”

“I wish you hadn’t seen me like that.”

“It’s f-fine.”

“Monty told me I burst into tears.”

“I d-do it all the t-time.”

That gets a laugh out of Percy at least.

“It happens after a fit sometimes, the crying. It must be because my brain gets all mixed up. It’s better than the vomiting but I apparently did that too so…” He shrugs and it’s clear he’s trying to play this off as no big deal but he’s red cheeked with mortification and his gaze isn’t quite as focused as it normally is. He winces each time he moves as well.

“I get…w-well they’re sort of…sort of f-fits,” I say, then immediately regret it. But I’ve gone too far now and must therefore plough forth. “W-well not…not f-fits, that was…was a s-stupid thing to…to say.”

“No, it’s not. Say it. Go on.” 

“It’s like…l-like s-sometimes I get so…so s-scared, for n-no reason, or f-for minor r-r-r-reasons.” I take a deep, shuddering breath, and wish for at least the millionth time words weren’t such a hardship for me. “It takes…takes over m-my whole body. I sta-start shaking, not like you did of…of course but just…”

Another pause. Another shuddering breath. I close my eyes and picture myself writing down the words I want to say instead—it’s a tactic Seb suggested and one that always works. Even if only for a little while. Not that Father’s ever let me close my eyes in order to do it.

“I-I mean I could…could probably c-control it if I was…was s-stronger, but I haven’t w-worked out how, and then my th-throat closes up…and…and I-I can h-hardly breathe let alone t-talk. Talking is…” I break off and let that one hang in the air. Everyone listening to my pathetic attempts to speak can tell what talking is like for me. Percy, though, keeps his gaze locked on me, leaning forwards as if what I’m saying is of upmost importance to him, and implores me to continue when I’m ready.

“Take your time,” he mutters, just like Seb always does when I get my words in a muddle.

“It’s mu-much worse now. With…with Father I can’t s-say a fu-full sentence. I know it’s n-not…you…you h-have a me-medical condition and I just…just have a…a weak m-mind so I don’t know why I’m com-com-comparing them.”

Another pause.

“I’m s-sorry,” I whisper, those blasted tears in my eyes again.

_Become a man, Grayson._

“I just…just didn’t w-want you to look s-so embarr-embarrassed anymore. P-please don’t w-worry what I think. What I think does-doesn’t m-matter.”

I stand at the foot of Percy’s bed, hands wrapped around the post of the footboard, breathing as though I’ve been running. One traitorous tear leaps for freedom down my cheek.

“It matters to me,” says Percy.

“Then…I think…I th-think you’re the kindest person I-I ever…ever met,” I whisper.

Percy smiles, still looking intently up at me, as though I really do matter. No-one but Seb has ever looked at me like that.

“Did Monty pay you to say that?”

“N-no. You were…are n-nice to me.”

“That you think someone being nice is such a stand out quality to you is sad.”

I shrug.

“Seb’s n-nice to me too.”

“I like Seb.” Percy curls his knees up to his chest with a wince and rests his chin atop them. “Monty needs someone to challenge him every now and again. He gets too used to being adored when he’s in my company.”

I fidget for a while with a cravat on the bedpost until I realise it’s been deliberately tied there and drop it like it’s a piece of burning coal.

“Do you…h-how did you know you l-loved him?”

“Oh.” Percy blinks a few times, his gaze also finding the cravat at the end of the bed. “I’m not sure. There was never a moment where I fell in love with Monty. We grew up together back in Cheshire. He makes me happy, makes me laugh, and he…” Percy laughs softly to himself and he picks at the embroidery on the covers. “Obviously he doesn’t think anything through so I’ve been furious with him more times than I can count, but there’s never been a moment in my memory where I’ve not loved him so much I could burst with it.”

“That m-must be…nice.”

“It is.” He smiles. “Life’s certainly not dull with Monty.”

“It certainly is not,” Monty says from the doorway and both Percy and I jump.

“How much of that did you hear?” Percy asks him, as he swaggers into the room, and plants a showy kiss on Percy’s mouth.

“All of it, darling, and it’s much appreciated.” He kisses him again. “Aside from the bit about you being furious with me sometimes.”

“Monty, you once got drunk and ran naked through the gardens of Versailles.”

“What?” I splutter.

“Yes, but only because of that awful duke, and I’m sure everyone enjoyed the view. I was rather handsome in my youth.”

“You’re handsome always, you menace. It doesn’t excuse all your drunken antics, though.”

“I haven’t been drunk in seventeen years.”

Monty flops down on the bed and Percy tips his head onto his shoulder.

“I know,” he mutters, smiling again.

“How are you feeling?”

“Better now. Still sore but I don’t feel sick anymore.”

“That’s good. I’ll bring you up some toast. You should eat.”

He kisses Percy again and stands, following me down to the kitchen, where the smell of charring bread is soon present.

As Monty, Seb, and I sit by the fire later that evening, though, all I can think about is what comes after this. After Monty and Percy and running away. When I have to go back to Cheshire…and Father.

All those letters I started and never finished circle my mind like a rowing boat that’s lost an oar.

_What do I tell him?_

_What do I want?_

The questions continue circling, as they have so many times over the days I’ve been here, without eliciting any real answer. I’ve dragged Seb into all this too. Lord knows what his parents are currently thinking. I’m the eldest of us two so I should be the responsible one. Not leading him to sneak out at night to one of the most dangerous cities in Europe.

Later, as the three of us reach the landing on our way to bed, I stop and Seb almost walks into my back.

“Monty,” I say, a lot louder than I’d planned.

He pauses with his fingers around his bedroom door handle.

“Yes?” he says, looking back at me.

“I…I want to write to Father. Tomorrow.”

“I thought you already had.”

“Well…I-I couldn’t f-find a way to phrase…phrase it. I r-ran away and not…not after an a-adventure with p-p-pirates, magic h-hearts, and a story…storybook romance.”

“A storybook romance?” he chuckles. “I love the sound of this.”

“I was s-scared and bolted af-after embarrassing him.”

“That’s nothing new to Father. I embarrassed him plenty.”

“But…but I don’t…don’t know if I w-want to run away. N-not forever.”

Monty lets go of the door handle and turns to face me fully.

“Oh?”

“I-I don’t w-want to be with Father. He’ll knock…knock me silly for all th-this. B-but I do want to ma-manage the estate. I’ll…I’ll be r-rubbish, h-hopeless, but I still want to t-try.”

“Then do it. You’re Father’s only remaining heir he can’t disinherit you too.”

“D-do you th-think?”

“If you don’t get the estate it won’t remain in the family. Someone has to inherit it.” He pauses and his brow wrinkles as if he’s thinking hard.

“Look,” he says eventually. “I’ll speak to Percy and if he’s amenable we’ll set up a meeting here in a few days. That way you can get everything out in the open on neutral territory.”

“Neutral territory?” Seb splutters. “We’re not dogs.”

“I’ve set up more than a few meetings in my time, Little Peele.”

I ignore their squabbling.

“W-would that be alright?” I ask.

“Of course, Gob…Grayson. I’ll have to speak to Percy, though, and see if he likes the idea. He might need…persuading.” Monty grins with full dimples deployed and winks. “Might be the sort of night to cover your ears.”

Both Seb and I groan and Monty laughs before disappearing into his room.

“What are you looking so pleased about? It’s worrying.” I hear Percy say, before we retreat into the spare room and shut the door behind us. Even if Monty was jesting we’re not taking the risk of an open door. I want to hear as little of my brother _persuading_ Percy as is humanly possible.

“It’s strange,” Seb says, as we get ready for bed, and both wince at a rather telling noise from next door. “How the part of me that likes and despises your brother can be weighted so equally.”


	17. Chapter 17

Sending my missive to Father is surprisingly easy. Percy, swaggering a little more than I’ve thus seen, helps us compose the letter and we send a messenger with it straight away—a dirty-faced young lad with an almost farcical cockney accent.

“Reckon he’ll get it there?” I ask, nervous at how eager the boy had been to take the letter and the coin Monty placed in his grubby palm.

“Of course he will,” Monty replies. “I promised him a shilling when he returns and I’ve never promised one of those lads a coin they haven’t collected.”

We expect the messenger to be back within the hour—the address of Father’s apartments, it turns out, isn’t too far from the Montague-Newton residence—but by late afternoon we’re still waiting.

Regardless of the activities he and Monty engaged in last night, activities all the burying my head beneath pillows couldn’t block out the noise of entirely, and which I very much wish to never think about again, Percy’s still sore from his fit and is tired again by mid-morning. Therefore Monty spends a good portion of the day fussing over him, and Percy lets himself be fussed over, as Seb and I look at our pirate books yet again. I’m too anxious to see the words, though, and end up being far more of a hindrance to this round of editing than a help.

“Am I ever going to get the chance to read that?” Monty says, as he comes back into the kitchen with the pastries he ran out to purchase for dinner—although it took him an age to actually leave the house for worrying over Percy.

“No,” Seb says, without even a pause for breath. “You have a big enough head as it is.”

“So my characterisation is favourable?”

“N-not always,” I whisper, sharing a smile with my best friend across the table.

“Well, no man’s perfect,” Monty says, ruffling his hair. “Even one as gorgeous as me.”

“Point proven,” Seb mutters, crossing out a word rather more violently than necessary.

Monty shoots Percy an _I told you_ look but Percy just laughs and plucks one of the pastries from him.

“You got the almond ones?”

“Only the best for my dearest darling love,” Monty says, winking at him. Seb feigns being sick into his cup. My stomach is so twisted in knots with nerves I’ll probably throw up for real if I attempt to eat one of those pastries. As always Seb seems to sense this and gives me a reassuring glance.

Monty bursts out laughing to a joke I didn’t hear from Percy. At the same moment three rapid knocks echo down the hall.

All of us fall silent at once and turn in the direction of the front door. Monty’s the first to stand.

_What if it’s Father?_

I don’t think I’m ready to see him right now. Not here. Not in this place where I’ve been safe and happy. I should have thought this through more, not brought Father to this house, and disturbed Monty and Percy’s peaceful life. Before I can stop him Monty opens the door and we all, standing behind my brother in the hallway, come face to face with the messenger. I breathe a sigh of relief so big Seb has to grab my elbow to stop me toppling over. 

“Did you pass on the message?” Monty says.

“I gave ‘im the letter, mister. He was in a right two-and-eight ‘bout it, sir. Shouted at me summit proper. Thought ‘e’d strike me I did. Kept sayin’ how his sons were disappointments and ‘ow he was headin’ over here straight away to see you right.”

I swallow and take an involuntary step back, away from the door, where I can picture Father appearing any moment with a raised fist and a glower.

“He was on ‘is way, mister, and I didn’t do nuffin, I swear it on me mother’s grave and I ain’t one to swear on graves o’ the dearly departed lightly, mister.”

“What happened?” Monty asks, looking back at Percy with a worry line between his brows. “Where is he?”

The boy slides his hands into his pockets and scuffs his shoes, that already look as though they’re ready to fall from his feet, against the doorstep.

“’e fell over, clutchin’ his heart ‘e was, mister. Fell into the road an’ the cart couldn’t stop in time. It weren’t me fault, nor the driver’s neither.”

“Where is he?” Monty asks again, and the boy keeps his gaze locked on the ground where he’s still scuffing his shoes.

“’e’s dead, mister.”


	18. Chapter 18

Seb’s hand at my elbow can’t stop me falling into the wall this time. My breathing is coming too fast, far too fast, and my trembling is such I can’t see straight as I slide down to the floor.

He’s dead.

Father’s dead.

I’m about to inherit the estate—an entire bloody estate—but I’m not ready. Probably never will be. I’m not good enough. I’m not…worthy.

“Thank you for informing us,” I hear Monty say to the messenger, as if I’m listening through a body of water, and I can just about see him press a few coins into the boy’s palm. “Where did they take his body?”

I don’t catch the boy’s response as Seb’s now kneeling before me, holding my shaking hands in his own clammy ones, and muttering my name over and over again.

“Grayson? G? Come on, mate, breathe.”

Tears rise to the surface thick and fast and I choke on a sob. My cries are so violent I can’t even suck in a breath.

“G, breathe,” Seb says again. “Picture the sky, like we practised, free and open. The air fresh. You’re alright. We’ll get through this together as always. I’m not going anywhere. I’m right here with you.”

The fist around my lungs and throat eases enough to draw in a ragged breath but I’m still blinded by those stupid tears. Monty and Percy are talking too but I’m unable to decipher their words—as if Seb and I are in a bubble of my own panic.

Unable to even remember how to talk, let alone actually utter words, I squeeze back Seb’s fingers. He audibly sighs in relief.

“It doesn’t seem like it now,” he says. “But it’ll get better. You will beat this. You’re so much stronger than you think.”

Yet, contrary to what he must believe, it isn’t sorrow that keeps sobs erupting from my throat, snot and tears coursing down my face, and my entire body shaking. It’s fear for the job I’m incapable of doing, but more than that, it’s _relief_.

There’ll be no more nights lying awake nursing a throbbing bruise, no more fearing each morning in case Father’s around, no more flinching at every shadow, waiting for the next hit.

It’s over.

Father’s dead.

My sob turns into a strangled giggle and before I can help it I’m laughing manically. Seb rests back against his heels as I pull my hands free to scrub at my face and muffle the sounds I’m making.

Guilt slams me hard in the chest. Father’s dead, I as good as killed him myself with that letter, but the more I try to stop the harder I laugh—until I’m laughing and crying at the same time. All my feelings are so jumbled up and confused I don’t even know which ones are real. It’s as if I’ve fallen into the sea and I’m being buffeted by a dozen different currents. Unable to tell which way is up and which is down.

As if understanding the barrage of feelings assaulting me Monty kneels down in Seb’s place, wraps his arms around my shoulders, and holds me so tight all my broken pieces seem to click back together.

My spine actually does click and Monty receives a sharp word from Seb.

It’s been an age since anyone held me—partly because I always thought I didn’t want anyone to. But as Monty continues to hold me I relax, rest my head against him, and cling to the back of his coat.

This is what having a big brother was supposed to be like.

A pang goes through me at the loss of having Monty there for all those other times I sat huddled on the floor in tears. All the times I was hurting and needed someone who understood. But for those times I always had Seb.

Even though I know Seb has and will never fully understand my situation, his father’s a prick but he at least never hit him, I can’t imagine going through my life without Seb’s guidance. Without the breathing exercises, the many ways he would spend hours making up to lessen my anxiety when it spiked, the lack of any sort of judgement no matter what state I arrived at his house in.

I wouldn’t change a moment of our friendship for the world. I realise now that for all the times I spent wishing I wasn’t alone, praying for a brother, I’ve had one this entire time. Seb’s been a better and more loving brother than anyone could ever wish for.

I sit back, letting go of Monty, and scrub away the snot and tears on my face—both of which have soaked a large section of his coat as well.

“S-sorry,” I mutter, my throat raw from crying, as I catch Seb’s eye over Monty’s shoulder and attempt to convey my gratitude to him in a smile.

“You haven’t a thing to be sorry for,” Monty says. “We were in earnest when we said you could stay here as long as you need.”

I sniff rather dramatically, accepting a handkerchief from Percy, who’s wearing the same kind smile he had when he first offered me a handkerchief in that London crowd. The first time we met.

“I-I h-have to go…go back,” I croak, and take a deep breath, realising as I speak that I don’t _have_ to go back at all. I could do what Monty, Percy, and Felicity have done—run away and carve myself a new path. But that thought cankers inside me. “I w-want to go b-back.”

Seb reaches across and squeezes my fingers again. When I catch his eye he smiles.

“Earl Grayson Montague,” he says, breaking the taut silence. “It certainly has a ring to it.”


	19. Chapter 19

It is strange to arrive back in Cheshire as if nothing has changed when my life has been so altered. The estate— _my estate_ —remains exactly as I left it. Even the weather’s the same, the sky a typical English grey, with the sun hopefully peeking around the clouds.

We’re all of us sore and grouchy from travel when our carriage rolls to a stop outside—sans Seb who we dropped at his own house a few minutes prior and left before Mister Peele had time to come outside and see who else was in the carriage.

“This is strange,” Monty murmurs, looking up at the vast house he was once due to inherit.

“It’s bigger than I remember,” says Percy.

“Yes, much. Looks colder too.”

“To think you gave all this up.”

“I gave it up for something far grander, darling.”

He smiles, with full dimples deployed, and gives Percy a quick peck on the cheek. A mere second later a footman opens the carriage door. He must not have been in our employ when Monty lived here for he doesn’t seem to recognise him, but his gaze does linger on Percy, and on Monty’s scars.

“Welcome home, my lord,” he says to me as I step down.

Back in London we agreed Monty and Percy would accompany me home, but they were to remain inside the manor, and wouldn’t be attending any of the events where they may stumble upon people who would know them from before. To avoid any scandal or dispute on who should inherit.

Having been at their town house, messy and cluttered but full of love, it’s doubly strange to be stepping into an entrance hall staged and cleaned to within an inch of its life. The house doesn’t feel real anymore. And despite the fact I know Father’s dead, I identified his body before leaving London, I still find myself searching the hall for him.

The click of hurried heels echoes along the landing and I look up in time to see Mother stumble on the stairs, one hand to her heart, and her eyes wide as saucers. She sways for a while and I rush up to take her elbow so she doesn’t swoon and come toppling down to the ground level. One dead parent is quite enough.

Her gaze doesn’t leave the two men downstairs. She walks as if in a trance down the remaining steps, leaning heavily against me, and only stops when she’s a foot away from Monty. Her gaze flicks sideways to take in the vivid scars, the missing ear, but then falls back upon his eyes. The eyes we both inherited from her.

“Henry,” she whispers, tears blooming, as she reaches slowly across the distance between them to cup his unscarred cheek in her hand.

“Hello, Mother,” Monty says, with a dimpled smile, as if he’s greeting her after a hunting trip not an absence of seventeen years.

“He said…he told me you were dead.”

“I sent a letter. Did Father not… Of course he didn’t.”

She breaks eye contact long enough to look behind him, her gaze catching on Percy who dips into a small bow. He’s clutching his fiddle case to him like a favourite toy.

“Lady Montague,” he greets.

“Mister Newton, but I thought…” She turns back to Monty, her composure reforming, as she lowers her hand and smooths her black skirts. “Have you got Felicity with you?”

“No,” Monty says. “She’s away at the moment but I’ve informed her of…of the situation. Once she makes land she’ll head back.”

“Were you really kidnapped by pirates?”

“Technically, we were, but they were more aspiring privateers, and they didn’t keep us hostage long. A half of an hour at most. They were terrible pirates.”

“Oh, Henry,” she says, in an exasperated sort of way, then takes a step back. “Well, now you’re here I’ll have your room made up for you. Will Mister Newton be staying with us or with his uncle?”

“Here, Mother.”

“Right. I’ll have a room made up for him too. Grayson, there are correspondences for you in your father’s…in your office that’ll need attending to. I’ll have your luggage unpacked.”

And that’s it, emotional reunion over, and brushed under the rug like a lingering spot of dust. It seems us Montagues really will go to extreme lengths to avoid expressing our feelings.

I head to Father’s office—my office—straight away and am confronted with a stack of papers and envelopes so large I can barely see overtop them. These, plus the unfinished papers we cleared from Father’s apartments in London, will take a serious amount of time to get through.

Death, it seems, requires an awful lot of paperwork.

I take a seat in the leather chair behind the desk tentatively. My hands immediately set to trembling. At each moment I can imagine Father striding in and chastising me for sitting here—telling me how useless and unworthy I am. Even as I begin reading and answering his letters, ink staining my hands, his voice echoes through my mind. A phantom shadow of him will always sit in this room with me. Along with the memories of all the tears I’ve cried here. All the hits I’ve taken.

When someone knocks on the door, I jump so spectacularly I overturn an ink stand. It spills down the side of the desk, dripping onto the rug and seeping out into a large black stain. My gaze won’t move from the spot and my breath is suddenly very shallow.

Less so when Percy pokes his head around the door.

“Grayson?”

I tear my eyes from the ink soaking into the rugs and drying in a sticky mess down the side of the desk as Percy slowly enters.

“I’ve never been in here,” he whispers, like we’re in a mausoleum, looking around cautiously. “Monty…Monty was hurt so many times in this room. You too, I imagine.”

I nod as he continues to search every shadow with his gaze—clearly picturing whatever scenarios Monty’s described to him.

“I came to see how you are,” he says, after a while, blinking rapidly.

“I’m…I’m f-fine.”

“How are you really?”

I shrug and go back to watching the spilled ink.

“Do you want some help? I’ve been managing Felicity and Johanna’s papers for years. I can…I’ve never worked on anything as large as this estate, of course, but I might be able to help a little.”

“T-thank you.”

“It’s no trouble.”

We’re not the best workforce in the world, but we end up so engrossed neither of us hear the commotion in the entrance hall for a good few minutes. It isn’t until Monty bursts through the door without knocking, a giant smile on his face, that we become aware.

“Goblin,” he shouts, noise control not being his best attribute. “Someone’s here to see you.”

“Who? Seb?”

But before Monty can answer a woman comes into view behind him. Her hair the same reddish brown as mine and Monty’s and wearing a plain black dress far more comfortable-looking than Mother’s.

“Grayson,” Monty says, as Percy rushes forwards to embrace the woman. “Meet Doctor Felicity Montague.”

Felicity extracts herself from Percy’s arms and rolls her eyes.

“I’m not an actual doctor, Monty.”

“Well you…know things. Doctor things.”

She rolls her eyes again and looks me up and down in an assessing sort of way. As if approving of what she sees she steps into Father’s office without the cautious fear Monty is currently eyeing the walls with.

“It’s nice to see you again, little brother,” Felicity says, as I stand mute and gaping behind the desk. “Did you need another pair of eyes on that paperwork? I can’t imagine these two are much help.”


	20. Chapter 20

As it happens my sister is a damn sight more helpful than my brothers. She hardly says a word but dives into the paperwork I’m wading through and helps for hours, reading glasses perched on her nose, and gets through at least double what Percy did.

I’m so numb to shocking reunions her appearance mere hours after we arrived hardly even surprises me. Apparently she’d arrived back in London right after we left, the fire’s embers still hot, and a letter explaining what had happened on the kitchen table for if she should return during Monty and Percy’s absence.

Despite my curiosity about the things she’s discovered on her hundreds of adventures—even in Cheshire I’ve heard of her alias Alexander Platt a few times (and to think all this while she was my sister!)—there’s too much work to be done for questions just yet. And Felicity is not as easily distracted as Monty and Percy. Or as willing to talk. I like the silence, though, for it never feels uncomfortable. It’s as if we’ve been working side by side my whole life.

Alongside the unholy amount of paperwork Father’s death has left me, there’s also the bloody funeral to arrange, and at least a million other things no-one ever tells you about. It’s all letters, meetings, money, and wills for days after we return—so much so I hardly get the chance to sleep let alone see my now much expanded family.

The closest I get to seeing my brothers, outside of my office, is when I glimpse them laying out by the pond on the one sunny day we are granted—their faces side by side but their bodies pointing in opposite directions.

At the first breakfast we end up enjoying together, though, I’m informed by Monty that my three siblings will be leaving the day before the funeral. To hold firm their lie that they are dead at the bottom of the ocean somewhere—not only for my own reputation but for their own as Doctor Platt as well.

Therefore, that evening once my paperwork is complete as much as is possible, we all meet in the dining room for a last meal. _The Last Supper_ as Monty has christened it. The nights are closing in early now so the dining room is ablaze with a roaring fire and enough candles to fill a church.

“I forgot how nice it was to be waited on,” Monty says, as our elderly butler lays down his main course and shuffles from the room.

“I forgot how nice unburnt food was,” Percy retorts, to which Monty scowls and Felicity laughs.

“You’re not much better, darling.” To soften the blow of their squabbling Monty leans up and plants a sloppy kiss to Percy’s mouth. “Good thing we’re both so goddamn gorgeous.”

Felicity sighs beside me, and I can almost feel the vibration of an eyeroll.

“Every time I come home I hope you two are a little less obsessed with each other.”

“No luck there, Feli,” says Monty, taking a large bite of venison.

“I know. I heard Percy sneaking into your room last night.”

“How do you know that? I could have been sneaking _out_ for a…a glass of water.”

“Oh, please. I grew up with you, Henry, I know the sound of lads sneaking into your room. Try and be a bit more subtle next time.”

Percy coughs and Seb, who by some miracle wasn’t punished at all for running off to London for a week, in fact his parents didn’t even notice he was missing for three days, catches my eye and smiles. He’s made it clear which of my two blood related siblings he likes better, and Monty is not it.

“What’s the use in subtlety?” Monty says. “If I like something, and I like Percy _very much_ , I intend to be as open in my infatuation as possible.”

“So we’ve noticed,” Seb mutters, spearing a roast potato with his fork.

“Glad to see one of the Peele’s is likeable at least,” Felicity says, which spins the conversation back around to Seb’s father and spawns yet another chorus of _we hate Richard Peele_ ’s.

Our last supper passes with the speed of all nights one hopes will never end. Laughter from us all, even Felicity much to her own horror, echoes through the house to such a volume Mother sends down a member of staff twice to quieten us. But this only makes our mirth stronger. As the fire burns down to an ember, and the candles melt to stubs, we cling to each final moment in each other’s company—tightening our grip on this golden evening.

I forget about the looming funeral completely, forget about Father, and even speak a full sentence without stuttering _twice_. Both times I do it Seb smiles at me with such obvious pride my mood impossibly improves all the more. An outsider would find the happiness inside me now nauseating.

Yet, like sand slipping through our fingers, our final night does end and we find ourselves too soon standing on the front steps in the weak morning light ready to say our goodbyes. With a deep breath and a heavy feeling in my chest I take a wrapped package from Seb and hand it to Monty before I can change my mind.  

“What’s this?”

“Our books. M-mine and…and S-Seb’s. The S-Swashbuckling Adventures of H-Henry and Felicity Mon-Montague. Editions one to t-twelve.”

“But I thought you said…”

Monty looks down at the package as Seb steps towards Percy.

“Please keep a close watch on Monty’s head as he reads. If it swells too large confiscate the books immediately.”

Percy smiles and Seb excuses himself, disappearing back inside. He's never liked goodbyes much. Without warning Percy launches forwards and embraces me tightly. He only holds on for a few seconds, jumping back as if remembering I’m not a particularly cuddly person by nature, but keeps a fierce eye contact.

“If you need anything, _anything_ , you write to us.”

“I will.”

“Even if you’re just feeling bad and you need someone to talk to.”

I nod, and Percy folds me into another quick embrace.

“Monty’s terrible at letter writing, but I’ll definitely write.”

“Hey there, I am very good at writing.”

“You haven’t ever written to me,” Felicity says. “Percy writes, and he makes you sign the letters, that’s not the same thing.”

“Well, I’m sure glad you came home, darling,” Monty mutters, as Percy snorts a laugh he quickly stifles behind his hand. Catching Felicity’s eye he inclines his head towards their carriage, and with one last embrace from him and a goodbye and firm handshake from Felicity, they install themselves within it.

When it’s just the two of us on the steps Monty ruffles his hair and turns to me.

“I’m so glad I met you, Grayson,” he says, his frankness taking me by surprise.

“M-me too.”

“Just when I think Percy can’t give me anything more, he helps a lost young man in a crowd, and it turns out to be my baby brother.”

“He’s…he’s very k-kind.”

“Abso-bloody-lutely he is.” Monty pauses for a moment, his gaze flicking towards the carriage, where Percy and Felicity are putting up a good show of not listening to our conversation. “Look, I want you to remember how much you’re worth, Grayson, you hear me? Sitting in his office, managing his estate, will be hard but you can do it. You’re ten times more capable that I.”

I blink rapidly but a single tear still manages to sneak free and make a track down my cheek. I sniffle which makes it worse.

“Here, as someone once told me, there is life after survival. We are not broken things, you and I, for what we’ve been through. It gets better. So, so much better.”

He grins and glances quickly back towards Percy as though the movement is completely out of his control. We embrace and say our goodbyes but I feel quite the opposite of what I’m supposed to.

This isn’t a goodbye. Not really.

As the carriage disappears down the drive I smile without warning. A broad Monty-style smile full of dimples. I realise, as I step back into the house, it’s because finally, after everything, I’m living my own real adventure. And I’m determined to make this one so much better than fiction.

 

 

_Dear Monty,_

_Growing up in this house full of ghosts was never easy. For years I felt as though I was walking in your shadow, like I was taking an inheritance that should have been yours, but now I realise this was never your path. Never your life. You are happy in ways most will never know—in a way that’s taught me joy can be found despite the sufferings of our past._

_You, Percy, and Felicity were not the siblings I expected, but I will forever be a better person for knowing you._

_So, from the bottom of my heart, thank you. The youngest Montague got to have an adventure after all and it was everything I could have dreamed of._

_Until we next meet, your loving brother,_

_Grayson Montague._

_P.S. Seb says hello. (That is of course a lie but I’m sure he’s waving on the inside.)_


End file.
